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ALSO BY JOHN GREEN

Looking for Alaska

An Abundance of Katherines

Paper Towns

Will Grayson, Will GraysonWITH DAVID LEVITHAN

DUTTON BOOKS | An imprint of Penguin Group(USA) Inc.

DUTTON BOOKSA MEMBER OF PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC.

Published by the Penguin Group | Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hud-son Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. | Penguin Group

(Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) | Penguin

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gistered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidentsare either the product of the author’s imagination or are used ficti-

tiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businessestablishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by John Green

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, ordistributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Pleasedo not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in vi-olation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Pub-

lished simultaneously in Canada.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume anyresponsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

CIP Data is available.

Published in the United States by Dutton Books, a member of PenguinGroup (USA) Inc. 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

www.penguin.com/teen

Designed by Irene Vandervoort

ISBN 978-1-101-56918-4

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TO ESTHER EARL

Contents

EPIGRAPHAUTHOR’S NOTE

CHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENCHAPTER ELEVENCHAPTER TWELVECHAPTER THIRTEENCHAPTER FOURTEENCHAPTER FIFTEENCHAPTER SIXTEENCHAPTER SEVENTEENCHAPTER EIGHTEENCHAPTER NINETEENCHAPTER TWENTYCHAPTER TWENTY-ONECHAPTER TWENTY-TWOCHAPTER TWENTY-THREECHAPTER TWENTY-FOURCHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

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As the tide washed in, the Dutch TulipMan faced the ocean: “Conjoiner rejoin-der poisoner concealer revelator. Lookat it, rising up and rising down, takingeverything with it.”

“What’s that?” I asked.“Water,” the Dutchman said. “Well,

and time.”

—PETER VAN HOUTEN, An ImperialAffliction

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is not so much an author’s note as anauthor’s reminder of what was printed insmall type a few pages ago: This book is awork of fiction. I made it up.

Neither novels nor their readers benefitfrom attempts to divine whether any factshide inside a story. Such efforts attack thevery idea that made-up stories can matter,which is sort of the foundational assumptionof our species.

I appreciate your cooperation in thismatter.

CHAPTER ONE

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year,my mother decided I was depressed, pre-sumably because I rarely left the house,spent quite a lot of time in bed, read thesame book over and over, ate infrequently,and devoted quite a bit of my abundant freetime to thinking about death.

Whenever you read a cancer booklet orwebsite or whatever, they always list depres-sion among the side effects of cancer. But, infact, depression is not a side effect of cancer.Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer

is also a side effect of dying. Almosteverything is, really.) But my mom believed Irequired treatment, so she took me to see myRegular Doctor Jim, who agreed that I wasveritably swimming in a paralyzing andtotally clinical depression, and that thereforemy meds should be adjusted and also Ishould attend a weekly Support Group.

This Support Group featured a rotatingcast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. Why did the cast rotate?A side effect of dying.

The Support Group, of course, was de-pressing as hell. It met every Wednesday inthe basement of a stone-walled Episcopalchurch shaped like a cross. We all sat in acircle right in the middle of the cross, wherethe two boards would have met, where theheart of Jesus would have been.

I noticed this because Patrick, the Sup-port Group Leader and only person overeighteen in the room, talked about the heart

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of Jesus every freaking meeting, all abouthow we, as young cancer survivors, were sit-ting right in Christ’s very sacred heart andwhatever.

So here’s how it went in God’s heart:The six or seven or ten of us walked/wheeledin, grazed at a decrepit selection of cookiesand lemonade, sat down in the Circle ofTrust, and listened to Patrick recount for thethousandth time his depressingly miserablelife story—how he had cancer in his balls andthey thought he was going to die but hedidn’t die and now here he is, a full-grownadult in a church basement in the 137thnicest city in America, divorced, addicted tovideo games, mostly friendless, eking out ameager living by exploiting his cancertasticpast, slowly working his way toward a mas-ter’s degree that will not improve his careerprospects, waiting, as we all do, for thesword of Damocles to give him the relief thathe escaped lo those many years ago when

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cancer took both of his nuts but spared whatonly the most generous soul would call hislife.

AND YOU TOO MIGHT BE SO LUCKY!Then we introduced ourselves: Name.

Age. Diagnosis. And how we’re doing today.I’m Hazel, I’d say when they’d get to me. Six-teen. Thyroid originally but with an impress-ive and long-settled satellite colony in mylungs. And I’m doing okay.

Once we got around the circle, Patrickalways asked if anyone wanted to share. Andthen began the circle jerk of support: every-one talking about fighting and battling andwinning and shrinking and scanning. To befair to Patrick, he let us talk about dying, too.But most of them weren’t dying. Most wouldlive into adulthood, as Patrick had.

(Which meant there was quite a lot ofcompetitiveness about it, with everybodywanting to beat not only cancer itself, butalso the other people in the room. Like, I

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realize that this is irrational, but when theytell you that you have, say, a 20 percentchance of living five years, the math kicks inand you figure that’s one in five . . . so youlook around and think, as any healthy personwould: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.)

The only redeeming facet of SupportGroup was this kid named Isaac, a long-faced, skinny guy with straight blond hairswept over one eye.

And his eyes were the problem. He hadsome fantastically improbable eye cancer.One eye had been cut out when he was a kid,and now he wore the kind of thick glassesthat made his eyes (both the real one and theglass one) preternaturally huge, like hiswhole head was basically just this fake eyeand this real eye staring at you. From what Icould gather on the rare occasions whenIsaac shared with the group, a recurrencehad placed his remaining eye in mortal peril.

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Isaac and I communicated almost ex-clusively through sighs. Each time someonediscussed anticancer diets or snortingground-up shark fin or whatever, he’d glanceover at me and sigh ever so slightly. I’d shakemy head microscopically and exhale inresponse.

So Support Group blew, and after a fewweeks, I grew to be rather kicking-and-screaming about the whole affair. In fact, onthe Wednesday I made the acquaintance ofAugustus Waters, I tried my level best to getout of Support Group while sitting on thecouch with my mom in the third leg of atwelve-hour marathon of the previous sea-son’s America’s Next Top Model, which ad-mittedly I had already seen, but still.

Me: “I refuse to attend Support Group.”Mom: “One of the symptoms of depres-

sion is disinterest in activities.”

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Me: “Please just let me watch America’sNext Top Model. It’s an activity.”

Mom: “Television is a passivity.”Me: “Ugh, Mom, please.”Mom: “Hazel, you’re a teenager. You’re

not a little kid anymore. You need to makefriends, get out of the house, and live yourlife.”

Me: “If you want me to be a teenager,don’t send me to Support Group. Buy me afake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, andtake pot.”

Mom: “You don’t take pot, for starters.”Me: “See, that’s the kind of thing I’d

know if you got me a fake ID.”Mom: “You’re going to Support Group.”Me: “UGGGGGGGGGGGGG.”Mom: “Hazel, you deserve a life.”That shut me up, although I failed to see

how attendance at Support Group met thedefinition of life. Still, I agreed to go—after

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negotiating the right to record the 1.5 epis-odes of ANTM I’d be missing.

I went to Support Group for the samereason that I’d once allowed nurses with amere eighteen months of graduate educationto poison me with exotically named chemic-als: I wanted to make my parents happy.There is only one thing in this world shittierthan biting it from cancer when you’re six-teen, and that’s having a kid who bites itfrom cancer.

Mom pulled into the circular driveway be-hind the church at 4:56. I pretended to fiddlewith my oxygen tank for a second just to killtime.

“Do you want me to carry it in for you?”“No, it’s fine,” I said. The cylindrical

green tank only weighed a few pounds, and Ihad this little steel cart to wheel it aroundbehind me. It delivered two liters of oxygento me each minute through a cannula, a

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transparent tube that split just beneath myneck, wrapped behind my ears, and then re-united in my nostrils. The contraption wasnecessary because my lungs sucked at beinglungs.

“I love you,” she said as I got out.“You too, Mom. See you at six.”“Make friends!” she said through the

rolled-down window as I walked away.I didn’t want to take the elevator be-

cause taking the elevator is a Last Days kindof activity at Support Group, so I took thestairs. I grabbed a cookie and poured somelemonade into a Dixie cup and then turnedaround.

A boy was staring at me.I was quite sure I’d never seen him be-

fore. Long and leanly muscular, he dwarfedthe molded plastic elementary school chairhe was sitting in. Mahogany hair, straightand short. He looked my age, maybe a yearolder, and he sat with his tailbone against

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the edge of the chair, his posture aggressivelypoor, one hand half in a pocket of dark jeans.

I looked away, suddenly conscious of mymyriad insufficiencies. I was wearing oldjeans, which had once been tight but nowsagged in weird places, and a yellow T-shirtadvertising a band I didn’t even like any-more. Also my hair: I had this pageboy hair-cut, and I hadn’t even bothered to, like,brush it. Furthermore, I had ridiculously fatchipmunked cheeks, a side effect of treat-ment. I looked like a normally proportionedperson with a balloon for a head. This wasnot even to mention the cankle situation.And yet—I cut a glance to him, and his eyeswere still on me.

It occurred to me why they call it eyecontact.

I walked into the circle and sat downnext to Isaac, two seats away from the boy. Iglanced again. He was still watching me.

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Look, let me just say it: He was hot. Anonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and itis, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form ofassault. But a hot boy . . . well.

I pulled out my phone and clicked it so itwould display the time: 4:59. The circle filledin with the unlucky twelve-to-eighteens, andthen Patrick started us out with the serenityprayer: God, grant me the serenity to acceptthe things I cannot change, the courage tochange the things I can, and the wisdom toknow the difference. The guy was still staringat me. I felt rather blushy.

Finally, I decided that the properstrategy was to stare back. Boys do not havea monopoly on the Staring Business, afterall. So I looked him over as Patrick acknow-ledged for the thousandth time his ball-less-ness etc., and soon it was a staring contest.After a while the boy smiled, and then finallyhis blue eyes glanced away. When he looked

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back at me, I flicked my eyebrows up to say, Iwin.

He shrugged. Patrick continued andthen finally it was time for the introductions.“Isaac, perhaps you’d like to go first today. Iknow you’re facing a challenging time.”

“Yeah,” Isaac said. “I’m Isaac. I’m seven-teen. And it’s looking like I have to get sur-gery in a couple weeks, after which I’ll beblind. Not to complain or anything because Iknow a lot of us have it worse, but yeah, Imean, being blind does sort of suck. My girl-friend helps, though. And friends like Augus-tus.” He nodded toward the boy, who nowhad a name. “So, yeah,” Isaac continued. Hewas looking at his hands, which he’d foldedinto each other like the top of a tepee.“There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“We’re here for you, Isaac,” Patrick said.“Let Isaac hear it, guys.” And then we all, in amonotone, said, “We’re here for you, Isaac.”

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Michael was next. He was twelve. Hehad leukemia. He’d always had leukemia. Hewas okay. (Or so he said. He’d taken theelevator.)

Lida was sixteen, and pretty enough tobe the object of the hot boy’s eye. She was aregular—in a long remission from appen-diceal cancer, which I had not previouslyknown existed. She said—as she had everyother time I’d attended Support Group—thatshe felt strong, which felt like bragging to meas the oxygen-drizzling nubs tickled mynostrils.

There were five others before they got tohim. He smiled a little when his turn came.His voice was low, smoky, and dead sexy.“My name is Augustus Waters,” he said. “I’mseventeen. I had a little touch of osteosar-coma a year and a half ago, but I’m just heretoday at Isaac’s request.”

“And how are you feeling?” askedPatrick.

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“Oh, I’m grand.” Augustus Waterssmiled with a corner of his mouth. “I’m on aroller coaster that only goes up, my friend.”

When it was my turn, I said, “My nameis Hazel. I’m sixteen. Thyroid with mets inmy lungs. I’m okay.”

The hour proceeded apace: Fights wererecounted, battles won amid wars sure to belost; hope was clung to; families were bothcelebrated and denounced; it was agreed thatfriends just didn’t get it; tears were shed;comfort proffered. Neither Augustus Watersnor I spoke again until Patrick said, “Augus-tus, perhaps you’d like to share your fearswith the group.”

“My fears?”“Yes.”“I fear oblivion,” he said without a mo-

ment’s pause. “I fear it like the proverbialblind man who’s afraid of the dark.”

“Too soon,” Isaac said, cracking a smile.

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“Was that insensitive?” Augustus asked.“I can be pretty blind to other people’sfeelings.”

Isaac was laughing, but Patrick raised achastening finger and said, “Augustus,please. Let’s return to you and yourstruggles. You said you fear oblivion?”

“I did,” Augustus answered.Patrick seemed lost. “Would, uh, would

anyone like to speak to that?”I hadn’t been in proper school in three

years. My parents were my two best friends.My third best friend was an author who didnot know I existed. I was a fairly shy per-son—not the hand-raising type.

And yet, just this once, I decided tospeak. I half raised my hand and Patrick, hisdelight evident, immediately said, “Hazel!” Iwas, I’m sure he assumed, opening up. Be-coming Part Of The Group.

I looked over at Augustus Waters, wholooked back at me. You could almost see

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through his eyes they were so blue. “Therewill come a time,” I said, “when all of us aredead. All of us. There will come a time whenthere are no human beings remaining to re-member that anyone ever existed or that ourspecies ever did anything. There will be noone left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra,let alone you. Everything that we did andbuilt and wrote and thought and discoveredwill be forgotten and all of this”—I gesturedencompassingly—“will have been for naught.Maybe that time is coming soon and maybeit is millions of years away, but even if wesurvive the collapse of our sun, we will notsurvive forever. There was time before or-ganisms experienced consciousness, andthere will be time after. And if the inevitabil-ity of human oblivion worries you, I encour-age you to ignore it. God knows that’s whateveryone else does.”

I’d learned this from my aforementionedthird best friend, Peter Van Houten, the

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reclusive author of An Imperial Affliction,the book that was as close a thing as I had toa Bible. Peter Van Houten was the only per-son I’d ever come across who seemed to (a)understand what it’s like to be dying, and (b)not have died.

After I finished, there was quite a longperiod of silence as I watched a smile spreadall the way across Augustus’s face—not thelittle crooked smile of the boy trying to besexy while he stared at me, but his real smile,too big for his face. “Goddamn,” Augustussaid quietly. “Aren’t you something else.”

Neither of us said anything for the restof Support Group. At the end, we all had tohold hands, and Patrick led us in a prayer.“Lord Jesus Christ, we are gathered here inYour heart, literally in Your heart, as cancersurvivors. You and You alone know us as weknow ourselves. Guide us to life and theLight through our times of trial. We pray forIsaac’s eyes, for Michael’s and Jamie’s blood,

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for Augustus’s bones, for Hazel’s lungs, forJames’s throat. We pray that You might healus and that we might feel Your love, andYour peace, which passes all understanding.And we remember in our hearts those whomwe knew and loved who have gone home toyou: Maria and Kade and Joseph and Haleyand Abigail and Angelina and Taylor andGabriel and . . .”

It was a long list. The world contains alot of dead people. And while Patrick dronedon, reading the list from a sheet of paper be-cause it was too long to memorize, I kept myeyes closed, trying to think prayerfully butmostly imagining the day when my namewould find its way onto that list, all the wayat the end when everyone had stoppedlistening.

When Patrick was finished, we said thisstupid mantra together—LIVING OUR BESTLIFE TODAY—and it was over. AugustusWaters pushed himself out of his chair and

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walked over to me. His gait was crooked likehis smile. He towered over me, but he kepthis distance so I wouldn’t have to crane myneck to look him in the eye. “What’s yourname?” he asked.

“Hazel.”“No, your full name.”“Um, Hazel Grace Lancaster.” He was

just about to say something else when Isaacwalked up. “Hold on,” Augustus said, raisinga finger, and turned to Isaac. “That was actu-ally worse than you made it out to be.”

“I told you it was bleak.”“Why do you bother with it?”“I don’t know. It kind of helps?”Augustus leaned in so he thought I

couldn’t hear. “She’s a regular?” I couldn’thear Isaac’s comment, but Augustus respon-ded, “I’ll say.” He clasped Isaac by bothshoulders and then took a half step awayfrom him. “Tell Hazel about clinic.”

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Isaac leaned a hand against the snacktable and focused his huge eye on me. “Okay,so I went into clinic this morning, and I wastelling my surgeon that I’d rather be deafthan blind. And he said, ‘It doesn’t work thatway,’ and I was, like, ‘Yeah, I realize itdoesn’t work that way; I’m just saying I’drather be deaf than blind if I had the choice,which I realize I don’t have,’ and he said,‘Well, the good news is that you won’t bedeaf,’ and I was like, ‘Thank you for explain-ing that my eye cancer isn’t going to makeme deaf. I feel so fortunate that an intellectu-al giant like yourself would deign to operateon me.’”

“He sounds like a winner,” I said. “I’mgonna try to get me some eye cancer just so Ican make this guy’s acquaintance.”

“Good luck with that. All right, I shouldgo. Monica’s waiting for me. I gotta look ather a lot while I can.”

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“Counterinsurgence tomorrow?” Augus-tus asked.

“Definitely.” Isaac turned and ran up thestairs, taking them two at a time.

Augustus Waters turned to me. “Liter-ally,” he said.

“Literally?” I asked.“We are literally in the heart of Jesus,”

he said. “I thought we were in a church base-ment, but we are literally in the heart ofJesus.”

“Someone should tell Jesus,” I said. “Imean, it’s gotta be dangerous, storing chil-dren with cancer in your heart.”

“I would tell Him myself,” Augustussaid, “but unfortunately I am literally stuckinside of His heart, so He won’t be able tohear me.” I laughed. He shook his head, justlooking at me.

“What?” I asked.“Nothing,” he said.“Why are you looking at me like that?”

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Augustus half smiled. “Because you’rebeautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people,and I decided a while ago not to deny myselfthe simpler pleasures of existence.” A briefawkward silence ensued. Augustus plowedthrough: “I mean, particularly given that, asyou so deliciously pointed out, all of this willend in oblivion and everything.”

I kind of scoffed or sighed or exhaled ina way that was vaguely coughy and then said,“I’m not beau—”

“You’re like a millennial Natalie Port-man. Like V for Vendetta Natalie Portman.”

“Never seen it,” I said.“Really?” he asked. “Pixie-haired gor-

geous girl dislikes authority and can’t helpbut fall for a boy she knows is trouble. It’syour autobiography, so far as I can tell.”

His every syllable flirted. Honestly, hekind of turned me on. I didn’t even knowthat guys could turn me on—not, like, in reallife.

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A younger girl walked past us. “How’s itgoing, Alisa?” he asked. She smiled andmumbled, “Hi, Augustus.” “Memorialpeople,” he explained. Memorial was the bigresearch hospital. “Where do you go?”

“Children’s,” I said, my voice smallerthan I expected it to be. He nodded. The con-versation seemed over. “Well,” I said, nod-ding vaguely toward the steps that led us outof the Literal Heart of Jesus. I tilted my cartonto its wheels and started walking. Helimped beside me. “So, see you next time,maybe?” I asked.

“You should see it,” he said. “V for Ven-detta, I mean.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll look it up.”“No. With me. At my house,” he said.

“Now.”I stopped walking. “I hardly know you,

Augustus Waters. You could be an axmurderer.”

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He nodded. “True enough, Hazel Grace.”He walked past me, his shoulders filling outhis green knit polo shirt, his back straight,his steps lilting just slightly to the right as hewalked steady and confident on what I haddetermined was a prosthetic leg. Osteosar-coma sometimes takes a limb to check youout. Then, if it likes you, it takes the rest.

I followed him upstairs, losing groundas I made my way up slowly, stairs not beinga field of expertise for my lungs.

And then we were out of Jesus’s heartand in the parking lot, the spring air just onthe cold side of perfect, the late-afternoonlight heavenly in its hurtfulness.

Mom wasn’t there yet, which was un-usual, because Mom was almost always wait-ing for me. I glanced around and saw that atall, curvy brunette girl had Isaac pinnedagainst the stone wall of the church, kissinghim rather aggressively. They were closeenough to me that I could hear the weird

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noises of their mouths together, and I couldhear him saying, “Always,” and her saying,“Always,” in return.

Suddenly standing next to me, Augustushalf whispered, “They’re big believers inPDA.”

“What’s with the ‘always’?” The slurpingsounds intensified.

“Always is their thing. They’ll alwayslove each other and whatever. I would con-servatively estimate they have texted eachother the word always four million times inthe last year.”

A couple more cars drove up, taking Mi-chael and Alisa away. It was just Augustusand me now, watching Isaac and Monica,who proceeded apace as if they were notleaning against a place of worship. His handreached for her boob over her shirt andpawed at it, his palm still while his fingersmoved around. I wondered if that felt good.Didn’t seem like it would, but I decided to

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forgive Isaac on the grounds that he was go-ing blind. The senses must feast while thereis yet hunger and whatever.

“Imagine taking that last drive to thehospital,” I said quietly. “The last time you’llever drive a car.”

Without looking over at me, Augustussaid, “You’re killing my vibe here, HazelGrace. I’m trying to observe young love in itsmany-splendored awkwardness.”

“I think he’s hurting her boob,” I said.“Yes, it’s difficult to ascertain whether

he is trying to arouse her or perform a breastexam.” Then Augustus Waters reached into apocket and pulled out, of all things, a pack ofcigarettes. He flipped it open and put a cigar-ette between his lips.

“Are you serious?” I asked. “You thinkthat’s cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined thewhole thing.”

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“Which whole thing?” he asked, turningto me. The cigarette dangled unlit from theunsmiling corner of his mouth.

“The whole thing where a boy who is notunattractive or unintelligent or seemingly inany way unacceptable stares at me andpoints out incorrect uses of literality andcompares me to actresses and asks me towatch a movie at his house. But of coursethere is always a hamartia and yours is thatoh, my God, even though you HADFREAKING CANCER you give money to acompany in exchange for the chance to ac-quire YET MORE CANCER. Oh, my God. Letme just assure you that not being able tobreathe? SUCKS. Totally disappointing.Totally.”

“A hamartia?” he asked, the cigarettestill in his mouth. It tightened his jaw. Hehad a hell of a jawline, unfortunately.

“A fatal flaw,” I explained, turning awayfrom him. I stepped toward the curb, leaving

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Augustus Waters behind me, and then Iheard a car start down the street. It wasMom. She’d been waiting for me to, like,make friends or whatever.

I felt this weird mix of disappointmentand anger welling up inside of me. I don’teven know what the feeling was, really, justthat there was a lot of it, and I wanted tosmack Augustus Waters and also replace mylungs with lungs that didn’t suck at beinglungs. I was standing with my Chuck Taylorson the very edge of the curb, the oxygen tankball-and-chaining in the cart by my side, andright as my mom pulled up, I felt a hand grabmine.

I yanked my hand free but turned backto him.

“They don’t kill you unless you lightthem,” he said as Mom arrived at the curb.“And I’ve never lit one. It’s a metaphor, see:You put the killing thing right between your

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teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do itskilling.”

“It’s a metaphor,” I said, dubious. Momwas just idling.

“It’s a metaphor,” he said.“You choose your behaviors based on

their metaphorical resonances . . .” I said.“Oh, yes.” He smiled. The big, goofy,

real smile. “I’m a big believer in metaphor,Hazel Grace.”

I turned to the car. Tapped the window.It rolled down. “I’m going to a movie withAugustus Waters,” I said. “Please record thenext several episodes of the ANTM marathonfor me.”

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CHAPTER TWO

Augustus Waters drove horrifically.Whether stopping or starting, everythinghappened with a tremendous JOLT. I flewagainst the seat belt of his Toyota SUV eachtime he braked, and my neck snapped back-ward each time he hit the gas. I might havebeen nervous—what with sitting in the car ofa strange boy on the way to his house, keenlyaware that my crap lungs complicate effortsto fend off unwanted advances—but his driv-ing was so astonishingly poor that I couldthink of nothing else.

We’d gone perhaps a mile in jagged si-lence before Augustus said, “I failed the driv-ing test three times.”

“You don’t say.”He laughed, nodding. “Well, I can’t feel

pressure in old Prosty, and I can’t get thehang of driving left-footed. My doctors saymost amputees can drive with no problem,but . . . yeah. Not me. Anyway, I go in for myfourth driving test, and it goes about like thisis going.” A half mile in front of us, a lightturned red. Augustus slammed on thebrakes, tossing me into the triangular em-brace of the seat belt. “Sorry. I swear to GodI am trying to be gentle. Right, so anyway, atthe end of the test, I totally thought I’d failedagain, but the instructor was like, ‘Your driv-ing is unpleasant, but it isn’t technicallyunsafe.’”

“I’m not sure I agree,” I said. “I suspectCancer Perk.” Cancer Perks are the littlethings cancer kids get that regular kids don’t:

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basketballs signed by sports heroes, freepasses on late homework, unearned driver’slicenses, etc.

“Yeah,” he said. The light turned green. Ibraced myself. Augustus slammed the gas.

“You know they’ve got hand controls forpeople who can’t use their legs,” I pointedout.

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe someday.” Hesighed in a way that made me wonder wheth-er he was confident about the existence ofsomeday. I knew osteosarcoma was highlycurable, but still.

There are a number of ways to establishsomeone’s approximate survival expecta-tions without actually asking. I used the clas-sic: “So, are you in school?” Generally, yourparents pull you out of school at some pointif they expect you to bite it.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m at North Central. Ayear behind, though: I’m a sophomore.You?”

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I considered lying. No one likes acorpse, after all. But in the end I told thetruth. “No, my parents withdrew me threeyears ago.”

“Three years?” he asked, astonished.I told Augustus the broad outline of my

miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroidcancer when I was thirteen. (I didn’t tell himthat the diagnosis came three months after Igot my first period. Like: Congratulations!You’re a woman. Now die.) It was, we weretold, incurable.

I had a surgery called radical neck dis-section, which is about as pleasant as itsounds. Then radiation. Then they triedsome chemo for my lung tumors. The tumorsshrank, then grew. By then, I was fourteen.My lungs started to fill up with water. I waslooking pretty dead—my hands and feet bal-looned; my skin cracked; my lips were per-petually blue. They’ve got this drug thatmakes you not feel so completely terrified

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about the fact that you can’t breathe, and Ihad a lot of it flowing into me through aPICC line, and more than a dozen otherdrugs besides. But even so, there’s a certainunpleasantness to drowning, particularlywhen it occurs over the course of severalmonths. I finally ended up in the ICU withpneumonia, and my mom knelt by the side ofmy bed and said, “Are you ready, sweetie?”and I told her I was ready, and my dad justkept telling me he loved me in this voice thatwas not breaking so much as already broken,and I kept telling him that I loved him, too,and everyone was holding hands, and Icouldn’t catch my breath, and my lungs wereacting desperate, gasping, pulling me out ofthe bed trying to find a position that couldget them air, and I was embarrassed by theirdesperation, disgusted that they wouldn’tjust let go, and I remember my mom tellingme it was okay, that I was okay, that I wouldbe okay, and my father was trying so hard

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not to sob that when he did, which was regu-larly, it was an earthquake. And I rememberwanting not to be awake.

Everyone figured I was finished, but myCancer Doctor Maria managed to get some ofthe fluid out of my lungs, and shortly there-after the antibiotics they’d given me for thepneumonia kicked in.

I woke up and soon got into one of thoseexperimental trials that are famous in theRepublic of Cancervania for Not Working.The drug was Phalanxifor, this molecule de-signed to attach itself to cancer cells andslow their growth. It didn’t work in about 70percent of people. But it worked in me. Thetumors shrank.

And they stayed shrunk. Huzzah,Phalanxifor! In the past eighteen months, mymets have hardly grown, leaving me withlungs that suck at being lungs but could, con-ceivably, struggle along indefinitely with the

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assistance of drizzled oxygen and dailyPhalanxifor.

Admittedly, my Cancer Miracle had onlyresulted in a bit of purchased time. (I did notyet know the size of the bit.) But when tellingAugustus Waters, I painted the rosiest pos-sible picture, embellishing the miraculous-ness of the miracle.

“So now you gotta go back to school,” hesaid.

“I actually can’t,” I explained, “because Ialready got my GED. So I’m taking classes atMCC,” which was our community college.

“A college girl,” he said, nodding. “Thatexplains the aura of sophistication.” Hesmirked at me. I shoved his upper arm play-fully. I could feel the muscle right beneaththe skin, all tense and amazing.

We made a wheels-screeching turn intoa subdivision with eight-foot-high stuccowalls. His house was the first one on the left.

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A two-story colonial. We jerked to a halt inhis driveway.

I followed him inside. A wooden plaquein the entryway was engraved in cursive withthe words Home Is Where the Heart Is, andthe entire house turned out to be festoonedin such observations. Good Friends AreHard to Find and Impossible to Forget readan illustration above the coatrack. True LoveIs Born from Hard Times promised aneedlepointed pillow in their antique-fur-nished living room. Augustus saw me read-ing. “My parents call them Encourage-ments,” he explained. “They’re everywhere.”

His mom and dad called him Gus. They weremaking enchiladas in the kitchen (a piece ofstained glass by the sink read in bubbly let-ters Family Is Forever). His mom was put-ting chicken into tortillas, which his dad thenrolled up and placed in a glass pan. Theydidn’t seem too surprised by my arrival,

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which made sense: The fact that Augustusmade me feel special did not necessarily in-dicate that I was special. Maybe he broughthome a different girl every night to show hermovies and feel her up.

“This is Hazel Grace,” he said, by way ofintroduction.

“Just Hazel,” I said.“How’s it going, Hazel?” asked Gus’s

dad. He was tall—almost as tall as Gus—andskinny in a way that parentally aged peopleusually aren’t.

“Okay,” I said.“How was Isaac’s Support Group?”“It was incredible,” Gus said.“You’re such a Debbie Downer,” his

mom said. “Hazel, do you enjoy it?”I paused a second, trying to figure out if

my response should be calibrated to pleaseAugustus or his parents. “Most of the peopleare really nice,” I finally said.

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“That’s exactly what we found with fam-ilies at Memorial when we were in the thickof it with Gus’s treatment,” his dad said.“Everybody was so kind. Strong, too. In thedarkest days, the Lord puts the best peopleinto your life.”

“Quick, give me a throw pillow and somethread because that needs to be an Encour-agement,” Augustus said, and his dad lookeda little annoyed, but then Gus wrapped hislong arm around his dad’s neck and said,“I’m just kidding, Dad. I like the freaking En-couragements. I really do. I just can’t admitit because I’m a teenager.” His dad rolled hiseyes.

“You’re joining us for dinner, I hope?”asked his mom. She was small and brunetteand vaguely mousy.

“I guess?” I said. “I have to be home byten. Also I don’t, um, eat meat?”

“No problem. We’ll vegetarianize some,”she said.

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“Animals are just too cute?” Gus asked.“I want to minimize the number of

deaths I am responsible for,” I said.Gus opened his mouth to respond but

then stopped himself.His mom filled the silence. “Well, I think

that’s wonderful.”They talked to me for a bit about how

the enchiladas were Famous Waters Enchila-das and Not to Be Missed and about howGus’s curfew was also ten, and how theywere inherently distrustful of anyone whogave their kids curfews other than ten, andwas I in school—“she’s a college student,”Augustus interjected—and how the weatherwas truly and absolutely extraordinary forMarch, and how in spring all things are new,and they didn’t even once ask me about theoxygen or my diagnosis, which was weirdand wonderful, and then Augustus said,“Hazel and I are going to watch V for

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Vendetta so she can see her filmicdoppelgänger, mid-two thousands NataliePortman.”

“The living room TV is yours for thewatching,” his dad said happily.

“I think we’re actually gonna watch it inthe basement.”

His dad laughed. “Good try. Livingroom.”

“But I want to show Hazel Grace thebasement,” Augustus said.

“Just Hazel,” I said.“So show Just Hazel the basement,” said

his dad. “And then come upstairs and watchyour movie in the living room.”

Augustus puffed out his cheeks, bal-anced on his leg, and twisted his hips, throw-ing the prosthetic forward. “Fine,” hemumbled.

I followed him down carpeted stairs to ahuge basement bedroom. A shelf at my eyelevel reached all the way around the room,

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and it was stuffed solid with basketball mem-orabilia: dozens of trophies with gold plasticmen mid–jump shot or dribbling or reachingfor a layup toward an unseen basket. Therewere also lots of signed balls and sneakers.

“I used to play basketball,” he explained.“You must’ve been pretty good.”“I wasn’t bad, but all the shoes and balls

are Cancer Perks.” He walked toward the TV,where a huge pile of DVDs and video gameswere arranged into a vague pyramid shape.He bent at the waist and snatched up V forVendetta. “I was, like, the prototypical whiteHoosier kid,” he said. “I was all about resur-recting the lost art of the midrange jumper,but then one day I was shooting freethrows—just standing at the foul line at theNorth Central gym shooting from a rack ofballs. All at once, I couldn’t figure out why Iwas methodically tossing a spherical objectthrough a toroidal object. It seemed like thestupidest thing I could possibly be doing.

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“I started thinking about little kids put-ting a cylindrical peg through a circular hole,and how they do it over and over again formonths when they figure it out, and howbasketball was basically just a slightly moreaerobic version of that same exercise. Any-way, for the longest time, I just kept sinkingfree throws. I hit eighty in a row, my all-timebest, but as I kept going, I felt more andmore like a two-year-old. And then for somereason I started to think about hurdlers. Areyou okay?”

I’d taken a seat on the corner of his un-made bed. I wasn’t trying to be suggestive oranything; I just got kind of tired when I hadto stand a lot. I’d stood in the living roomand then there had been the stairs, and thenmore standing, which was quite a lot ofstanding for me, and I didn’t want to faint oranything. I was a bit of a Victorian Lady,fainting-wise. “I’m fine,” I said. “Just listen-ing. Hurdlers?”

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“Yeah, hurdlers. I don’t know why. Istarted thinking about them running theirhurdle races, and jumping over these totallyarbitrary objects that had been set in theirpath. And I wondered if hurdlers everthought, you know, This would go faster ifwe just got rid of the hurdles.”

“This was before your diagnosis?” Iasked.

“Right, well, there was that, too.” Hesmiled with half his mouth. “The day of theexistentially fraught free throws was coincid-entally also my last day of dual leggedness. Ihad a weekend between when they scheduledthe amputation and when it happened. Myown little glimpse of what Isaac is goingthrough.”

I nodded. I liked Augustus Waters. Ireally, really, really liked him. I liked the wayhis story ended with someone else. I liked hisvoice. I liked that he took existentiallyfraught free throws. I liked that he was a

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tenured professor in the Department ofSlightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appoint-ment in the Department of Having a VoiceThat Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin.And I liked that he had two names. I’ve al-ways liked people with two names, becauseyou get to make up your mind what you callthem: Gus or Augustus? Me, I was alwaysjust Hazel, univalent Hazel.

“Do you have siblings?” I asked.“Huh?” he answered, seeming a little

distracted.“You said that thing about watching kids

play.”“Oh, yeah, no. I have nephews, from my

half sisters. But they’re older. They’relike—DAD, HOW OLD ARE JULIE ANDMARTHA?”

“Twenty-eight!”“They’re like twenty-eight. They live in

Chicago. They are both married to very fancy

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lawyer dudes. Or banker dudes. I can’t re-member. You have siblings?”

I shook my head no. “So what’s yourstory?” he asked, sitting down next to me at asafe distance.

“I already told you my story. I was dia-gnosed when—”

“No, not your cancer story. Your story.Interests, hobbies, passions, weird fetishes,etcetera.”

“Um,” I said.“Don’t tell me you’re one of those people

who becomes their disease. I know so manypeople like that. It’s disheartening. Like, can-cer is in the growth business, right? Thetaking-people-over business. But surely youhaven’t let it succeed prematurely.”

It occurred to me that perhaps I had. Istruggled with how to pitch myself to Augus-tus Waters, which enthusiasms to embrace,and in the silence that followed it occurred to

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me that I wasn’t very interesting. “I ampretty unextraordinary.”

“I reject that out of hand. Think ofsomething you like. The first thing thatcomes to mind.”

“Um. Reading?”“What do you read?”“Everything. From, like, hideous ro-

mance to pretentious fiction to poetry.Whatever.”

“Do you write poetry, too?”“No. I don’t write.”“There!” Augustus almost shouted.

“Hazel Grace, you are the only teenager inAmerica who prefers reading poetry to writ-ing it. This tells me so much. You read a lotof capital-G great books, don’t you?”

“I guess?”“What’s your favorite?”“Um,” I said.My favorite book, by a wide margin, was

An Imperial Affliction, but I didn’t like to tell

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people about it. Sometimes, you read a bookand it fills you with this weird evangelicalzeal, and you become convinced that theshattered world will never be put back to-gether unless and until all living humansread the book. And then there are books likeAn Imperial Affliction, which you can’t tellpeople about, books so special and rare andyours that advertising your affection feelslike a betrayal.

It wasn’t even that the book was so goodor anything; it was just that the author, PeterVan Houten, seemed to understand me inweird and impossible ways. An ImperialAffliction was my book, in the way my bodywas my body and my thoughts were mythoughts.

Even so, I told Augustus. “My favoritebook is probably An Imperial Affliction,” Isaid.

“Does it feature zombies?” he asked.“No,” I said.

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“Stormtroopers?”I shook my head. “It’s not that kind of

book.”He smiled. “I am going to read this ter-

rible book with the boring title that does notcontain stormtroopers,” he promised, and Iimmediately felt like I shouldn’t have toldhim about it. Augustus spun around to astack of books beneath his bedside table. Hegrabbed a paperback and a pen. As hescribbled an inscription onto the title page,he said, “All I ask in exchange is that youread this brilliant and haunting novelizationof my favorite video game.” He held up thebook, which was called The Price of Dawn. Ilaughed and took it. Our hands kind of gotmuddled together in the book handoff, andthen he was holding my hand. “Cold,” hesaid, pressing a finger to my pale wrist.

“Not cold so much as underoxygenated,”I said.

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“I love it when you talk medical to me,”he said. He stood, and pulled me up withhim, and did not let go of my hand until wereached the stairs.

* * *

We watched the movie with several inches ofcouch between us. I did the totally middle-schooly thing wherein I put my hand on thecouch about halfway between us to let himknow that it was okay to hold it, but he didn’ttry. An hour into the movie, Augustus’s par-ents came in and served us the enchiladas,which we ate on the couch, and they werepretty delicious.

The movie was about this heroic guy in amask who died heroically for Natalie Port-man, who’s pretty badass and very hot anddoes not have anything approaching mypuffy steroid face.

As the credits rolled, he said, “Prettygreat, huh?”

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“Pretty great,” I agreed, although itwasn’t, really. It was kind of a boy movie. Idon’t know why boys expect us to like boymovies. We don’t expect them to like girlmovies. “I should get home. Class in themorning,” I said.

I sat on the couch for a while as Augus-tus searched for his keys. His mom sat downnext to me and said, “I just love this one,don’t you?” I guess I had been looking to-ward the Encouragement above the TV, adrawing of an angel with the caption WithoutPain, How Could We Know Joy?

(This is an old argument in the field ofThinking About Suffering, and its stupidityand lack of sophistication could be plumbedfor centuries, but suffice it to say that the ex-istence of broccoli does not in any way affectthe taste of chocolate.) “Yes,” I said. “A lovelythought.”

I drove Augustus’s car home withAugustus riding shotgun. He played me a

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couple songs he liked by a band called TheHectic Glow, and they were good songs, butbecause I didn’t know them already, theyweren’t as good to me as they were to him. Ikept glancing over at his leg, or the placewhere his leg had been, trying to imaginewhat the fake leg looked like. I didn’t want tocare about it, but I did a little. He probablycared about my oxygen. Illness repulses. I’dlearned that a long time ago, and I suspectedAugustus had, too.

As I pulled up outside of my house,Augustus clicked the radio off. The airthickened. He was probably thinking aboutkissing me, and I was definitely thinkingabout kissing him. Wondering if I wanted to.I’d kissed boys, but it had been a while. Pre-Miracle.

I put the car in park and looked over athim. He really was beautiful. I know boysaren’t supposed to be, but he was.

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“Hazel Grace,” he said, my name newand better in his voice. “It has been a realpleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Ditto, Mr. Waters,” I said. I felt shylooking at him. I could not match the intens-ity of his waterblue eyes.

“May I see you again?” he asked. Therewas an endearing nervousness in his voice.

I smiled. “Sure.”“Tomorrow?” he asked.“Patience, grasshopper,” I counseled.

“You don’t want to seem overeager.”“Right, that’s why I said tomorrow,” he

said. “I want to see you again tonight. ButI’m willing to wait all night and much of to-morrow.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m serious,” hesaid.

“You don’t even know me,” I said. Igrabbed the book from the center console.“How about I call you when I finish this?”

“But you don’t even have my phonenumber,” he said.

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“I strongly suspect you wrote it in thebook.”

He broke out into that goofy smile. “Andyou say we don’t know each other.”

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CHAPTER THREE

I stayed up pretty late that night readingThe Price of Dawn. (Spoiler alert: The priceof dawn is blood.) It wasn’t An ImperialAffliction, but the protagonist, Staff SergeantMax Mayhem, was vaguely likable despitekilling, by my count, no fewer than 118 indi-viduals in 284 pages.

So I got up late the next morning, aThursday. Mom’s policy was never to wakeme up, because one of the job requirementsof Professional Sick Person is sleeping a lot,so I was kind of confused at first when I

jolted awake with her hands on myshoulders.

“It’s almost ten,” she said.“Sleep fights cancer,” I said. “I was up

late reading.”“It must be some book,” she said as she

knelt down next to the bed and unscrewedme from my large, rectangular oxygen con-centrator, which I called Philip, because itjust kind of looked like a Philip.

Mom hooked me up to a portable tankand then reminded me I had class. “Did thatboy give it to you?” she asked out ofnowhere.

“By it, do you mean herpes?”“You are too much,” Mom said. “The

book, Hazel. I mean the book.”“Yeah, he gave me the book.”“I can tell you like him,” she said, eye-

brows raised, as if this observation requiredsome uniquely maternal instinct. I shrugged.

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“I told you Support Group would be worthyour while.”

“Did you just wait outside the entiretime?”

“Yes. I brought some paperwork. Any-way, time to face the day, young lady.”

“Mom. Sleep. Cancer. Fighting.”“I know, love, but there is class to at-

tend. Also, today is . . . ” The glee in Mom’svoice was evident.

“Thursday?”“Did you seriously forget?”“Maybe?”“It’s Thursday, March twenty-ninth!”

she basically screamed, a demented smileplastered to her face.

“You are really excited about knowingthe date!” I yelled back.

“HAZEL! IT’S YOUR THIRTY-THIRDHALF BIRTHDAY!”

“Ohhhhhh,” I said. My mom was reallysuper into celebration maximization. IT’S

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ARBOR DAY! LET’S HUG TREES AND EATCAKE! COLUMBUS BROUGHT SMALLPOXTO THE NATIVES; WE SHALL RECALLTHE OCCASION WITH A PICNIC!, etc.“Well, Happy thirty-third Half Birthday tome,” I said.

“What do you want to do on your veryspecial day?”

“Come home from class and set theworld record for number of episodes of TopChef watched consecutively?”

Mom reached up to this shelf above mybed and grabbed Bluie, the blue stuffed bearI’d had since I was, like, one—back when itwas socially acceptable to name one’s friendsafter their hue.

“You don’t want to go to a movie withKaitlyn or Matt or someone?” who were myfriends.

That was an idea. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll textKaitlyn and see if she wants to go to the mallor something after school.”

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Mom smiled, hugging the bear to herstomach. “Is it still cool to go to the mall?”she asked.

“I take quite a lot of pride in not know-ing what’s cool,” I answered.

* * *

I texted Kaitlyn, took a shower, got dressed,and then Mom drove me to school. My classwas American Literature, a lecture aboutFrederick Douglass in a mostly empty audit-orium, and it was incredibly difficult to stayawake. Forty minutes into the ninety-minuteclass, Kaitlyn texted back.

Awesomesauce. Happy Half Birthday.Castleton at 3:32?

Kaitlyn had the kind of packed social life thatneeds to be scheduled down to the minute. Iresponded:

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Sounds good. I’ll be at the food court.

Mom drove me directly from school tothe bookstore attached to the mall, where Ipurchased both Midnight Dawns andRequiem for Mayhem, the first two sequelsto The Price of Dawn, and then I walkedover to the huge food court and bought aDiet Coke. It was 3:21.

I watched these kids playing in thepirate-ship indoor playground while I read.There was this tunnel that these two kidskept crawling through over and over andthey never seemed to get tired, which mademe think of Augustus Waters and the exist-entially fraught free throws.

Mom was also in the food court, alone,sitting in a corner where she thought Icouldn’t see her, eating a cheesesteak sand-wich and reading through some papers.Medical stuff, probably. The paperwork wasendless.

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At 3:32 precisely, I noticed Kaitlyn strid-ing confidently past the Wok House. She sawme the moment I raised my hand, flashedher very white and newly straightened teethat me, and headed over.

She wore a knee-length charcoal coatthat fit perfectly and sunglasses that domin-ated her face. She pushed them up onto thetop of her head as she leaned down to hugme.

“Darling,” she said, vaguely British.“How are you?” People didn’t find the accentodd or off-putting. Kaitlyn just happened tobe an extremely sophisticated twenty-five-year-old British socialite stuck inside asixteen-year-old body in Indianapolis. Every-one accepted it.

“I’m good. How are you?”“I don’t even know anymore. Is that

diet?” I nodded and handed it to her. Shesipped through the straw. “I do wish you

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were at school these days. Some of the boyshave become downright edible.”

“Oh, yeah? Like who?” I asked. She pro-ceeded to name five guys we’d attended ele-mentary and middle school with, but Icouldn’t picture any of them.

“I’ve been dating Derek Wellington for abit,” she said, “but I don’t think it will last.He’s such a boy. But enough about me. Whatis new in the Hazelverse?”

“Nothing, really,” I said.“Health is good?”“The same, I guess?”“Phalanxifor!” she enthused, smiling.

“So you could just live forever, right?”“Probably not forever,” I said.“But basically,” she said. “What else is

new?”I thought of telling her that I was seeing

a boy, too, or at least that I’d watched amovie with one, just because I knew it wouldsurprise and amaze her that anyone as

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disheveled and awkward and stunted as mecould even briefly win the affections of a boy.But I didn’t really have much to brag about,so I just shrugged.

“What in heaven is that?” asked Kaitlyn,gesturing to the book.

“Oh, it’s sci-fi. I’ve gotten kinda into it.It’s a series.”

“I am alarmed. Shall we shop?”

We went to this shoe store. As we were shop-ping, Kaitlyn kept picking out all these open-toed flats for me and saying, “These wouldlook cute on you,” which reminded me thatKaitlyn never wore open-toed shoes on ac-count of how she hated her feet because shefelt her second toes were too long, as if thesecond toe was a window into the soul orsomething. So when I pointed out a pair ofsandals that would suit her skin tone, shewas like, “Yeah, but . . .” the but being butthey will expose my hideous second toes to

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the public, and I said, “Kaitlyn, you’re theonly person I’ve ever known to have toe-spe-cific dysmorphia,” and she said, “What isthat?”

“You know, like when you look in themirror and the thing you see is not the thingas it really is.”

“Oh. Oh,” she said. “Do you like these?”She held up a pair of cute but unspectacularMary Janes, and I nodded, and she foundher size and tried them on, pacing up anddown the aisle, watching her feet in the knee-high angled mirrors. Then she grabbed a pairof strappy hooker shoes and said, “Is it evenpossible to walk in these? I mean, I wouldjust die—” and then stopped short, looking atme as if to say I’m sorry, as if it were a crimeto mention death to the dying. “You shouldtry them on,” Kaitlyn continued, trying to pa-per over the awkwardness.

“I’d sooner die,” I assured her.

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I ended up just picking out some flip-flops so that I could have something to buy,and then I sat down on one of the benchesopposite a bank of shoes and watchedKaitlyn snake her way through the aisles,shopping with the kind of intensity and focusthat one usually associates with professionalchess. I kind of wanted to take out MidnightDawns and read for a while, but I knewthat’d be rude, so I just watched Kaitlyn. Oc-casionally she’d circle back to me clutchingsome closed-toe prey and say, “This?” and Iwould try to make an intelligent commentabout the shoe, and then finally she boughtthree pairs and I bought my flip-flops andthen as we exited she said, “Anthropologie?”

“I should head home actually,” I said.“I’m kinda tired.”

“Sure, of course,” she said. “I have to seeyou more often, darling.” She placed herhands on my shoulders, kissed me on both

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cheeks, and marched off, her narrow hipsswishing.

I didn’t go home, though. I’d told Momto pick me up at six, and while I figured shewas either in the mall or in the parking lot, Istill wanted the next two hours to myself.

I liked my mom, but her perpetual near-ness sometimes made me feel weirdlynervous. And I liked Kaitlyn, too. I really did.But three years removed from proper full-time schoolic exposure to my peers, I felt acertain unbridgeable distance between us. Ithink my school friends wanted to help methrough my cancer, but they eventuallyfound out that they couldn’t. For one thing,there was no through.

So I excused myself on the grounds ofpain and fatigue, as I often had over theyears when seeing Kaitlyn or any of my otherfriends. In truth, it always hurt. It alwayshurt not to breathe like a normal person, in-cessantly reminding your lungs to be lungs,

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forcing yourself to accept as unsolvable theclawing scraping inside-out ache of under-oxygenation. So I wasn’t lying, exactly. I wasjust choosing among truths.

I found a bench surrounded by an IrishGifts store, the Fountain Pen Emporium, anda baseball-cap outlet—a corner of the malleven Kaitlyn would never shop, and startedreading Midnight Dawns.

It featured a sentence-to-corpse ratio ofnearly 1:1, and I tore through it without everlooking up. I liked Staff Sergeant Max May-hem, even though he didn’t have much in theway of a technical personality, but mostly Iliked that his adventures kept happening.There were always more bad guys to kill andmore good guys to save. New wars startedeven before the old ones were won. I hadn’tread a real series like that since I was a kid,and it was exciting to live again in an infinitefiction.

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Twenty pages from the end of MidnightDawns, things started to look pretty bleakfor Mayhem when he was shot seventeentimes while attempting to rescue a (blond,American) hostage from the Enemy. But as areader, I did not despair. The war effortwould go on without him. There could—andwould—be sequels starring his cohorts: Spe-cialist Manny Loco and Private Jasper Jacksand the rest.

I was just about to the end when thislittle girl with barretted braids appeared infront of me and said, “What’s in your nose?”

And I said, “Um, it’s called a cannula.These tubes give me oxygen and help mebreathe.” Her mother swooped in and said,“Jackie,” disapprovingly, but I said, “No no,it’s okay,” because it totally was, and thenJackie asked, “Would they help me breathe,too?”

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“I dunno. Let’s try.” I took it off and letJackie stick the cannula in her nose andbreathe. “Tickles,” she said.

“I know, right?”“I think I’m breathing better,” she said.“Yeah?”“Yeah.”“Well,” I said, “I wish I could give you

my cannula but I kind of really need thehelp.” I already felt the loss. I focused on mybreathing as Jackie handed the tubes back tome. I gave them a quick swipe with my T-shirt, laced the tubes behind my ears, andput the nubbins back in place.

“Thanks for letting me try it,” she said.“No problem.”“Jackie,” her mother said again, and this

time I let her go.I returned to the book, where Staff Ser-

geant Max Mayhem was regretting that hehad but one life to give for his country, but I

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kept thinking about that little kid, and howmuch I liked her.

The other thing about Kaitlyn, I guess,was that it could never again feel natural totalk to her. Any attempts to feign normal so-cial interactions were just depressing be-cause it was so glaringly obvious that every-one I spoke to for the rest of my life wouldfeel awkward and self-conscious around me,except maybe kids like Jackie who just didn’tknow any better.

Anyway, I really did like being alone. Iliked being alone with poor Staff SergeantMax Mayhem, who—oh, come on, he’s notgoing to survive these seventeen bulletwounds, is he?

(Spoiler alert: He lives.)

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CHAPTER FOUR

I went to bed a little early that night, chan-ging into boy boxers and a T-shirt beforecrawling under the covers of my bed, whichwas queen size and pillow topped and one ofmy favorite places in the world. And then Istarted reading An Imperial Affliction for themillionth time.

AIA is about this girl named Anna (whonarrates the story) and her one-eyed mom,who is a professional gardener obsessed withtulips, and they have a normal lower-middle-

class life in a little central California townuntil Anna gets this rare blood cancer.

But it’s not a cancer book, because can-cer books suck. Like, in cancer books, thecancer person starts a charity that raisesmoney to fight cancer, right? And this com-mitment to charity reminds the cancer per-son of the essential goodness of humanityand makes him/her feel loved and encour-aged because s/he will leave a cancer-curinglegacy. But in AIA, Anna decides that being aperson with cancer who starts a cancer char-ity is a bit narcissistic, so she starts a charitycalled The Anna Foundation for People withCancer Who Want to Cure Cholera.

Also, Anna is honest about all of it in away no one else really is: Throughout thebook, she refers to herself as the side effect,which is just totally correct. Cancer kids areessentially side effects of the relentless muta-tion that made the diversity of life on earthpossible. So as the story goes on, she gets

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sicker, the treatments and disease racing tokill her, and her mom falls in love with thisDutch tulip trader Anna calls the DutchTulip Man. The Dutch Tulip Man has lots ofmoney and very eccentric ideas about how totreat cancer, but Anna thinks this guy mightbe a con man and possibly not even Dutch,and then just as the possibly Dutch guy andher mom are about to get married and Annais about to start this crazy new treatment re-gimen involving wheatgrass and low doses ofarsenic, the book ends right in the middle ofa

I know it’s a very literary decision andeverything and probably part of the reason Ilove the book so much, but there issomething to recommend a story that ends.And if it can’t end, then it should at leastcontinue into perpetuity like the adventuresof Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem’s platoon.

I understood the story ended becauseAnna died or got too sick to write and this

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midsentence thing was supposed to reflecthow life really ends and whatever, but therewere characters other than Anna in the story,and it seemed unfair that I would never findout what happened to them. I’d written, careof his publisher, a dozen letters to Peter VanHouten, each asking for some answers aboutwhat happens after the end of the story:whether the Dutch Tulip Man is a con man,whether Anna’s mother ends up married tohim, what happens to Anna’s stupid hamster(which her mom hates), whether Anna’sfriends graduate from high school—all thatstuff. But he’d never responded to any of myletters.

AIA was the only book Peter VanHouten had written, and all anyone seemedto know about him was that after the bookcame out he moved from the United States tothe Netherlands and became kind of reclus-ive. I imagined that he was working on a se-quel set in the Netherlands—maybe Anna’s

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mom and the Dutch Tulip Man end up mov-ing there and trying to start a new life. But ithad been ten years since An Imperial Afflic-tion came out, and Van Houten hadn’t pub-lished so much as a blog post. I couldn’t waitforever.

As I reread that night, I kept getting dis-tracted imagining Augustus Waters readingthe same words. I wondered if he’d like it, orif he’d dismiss it as pretentious. Then I re-membered my promise to call him afterreading The Price of Dawn, so I found hisnumber on its title page and texted him.

Price of Dawn review: Too many bod-ies. Not enough adjectives. How’s AIA?

He replied a minute later:

As I recall, you promised to CALL whenyou finished the book, not text.

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So I called.“Hazel Grace,” he said upon picking up.“So have you read it?”“Well, I haven’t finished it. It’s six

hundred fifty-one pages long and I’ve hadtwenty-four hours.”

“How far are you?”“Four fifty-three.”“And?”“I will withhold judgment until I finish.

However, I will say that I’m feeling a bit em-barrassed to have given you The Price ofDawn.”

“Don’t be. I’m already on Requiem forMayhem.”

“A sparkling addition to the series. So,okay, is the tulip guy a crook? I’m getting abad vibe from him.”

“No spoilers,” I said.“If he is anything other than a total gen-

tleman, I’m going to gouge his eyes out.”“So you’re into it.”

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“Withholding judgment! When can I seeyou?”

“Certainly not until you finish An Im-perial Affliction.” I enjoyed being coy.

“Then I’d better hang up and startreading.”

“You’d better,” I said, and the lineclicked dead without another word.

Flirting was new to me, but I liked it.

The next morning I had Twentieth-CenturyAmerican Poetry at MCC. This old womangave a lecture wherein she managed to talkfor ninety minutes about Sylvia Plathwithout ever once quoting a single word ofSylvia Plath.

When I got out of class, Mom was idlingat the curb in front of the building.

“Did you just wait here the entire time?”I asked as she hurried around to help mehaul my cart and tank into the car.

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“No, I picked up the dry cleaning andwent to the post office.”

“And then?”“I have a book to read,” she said.“And I’m the one who needs to get a

life.” I smiled, and she tried to smile back,but there was something flimsy in it. After asecond, I said, “Wanna go to a movie?”

“Sure. Anything you’ve been wanting tosee?”

“Let’s just do the thing where we go andsee whatever starts next.” She closed thedoor for me and walked around to thedriver’s side. We drove over to the Castletontheater and watched a 3-D movie about talk-ing gerbils. It was kind of funny, actually.

When I got out of the movie, I had four textmessages from Augustus.

Tell me my copy is missing the lasttwenty pages or something.

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Hazel Grace, tell me I have not reachedthe end of this book.

OH MY GOD DO THEY GET MARRIEDOR NOT OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS

I guess Anna died and so it just ends?CRUEL. Call me when you can. Hopeall’s okay.

So when I got home I went out into the back-yard and sat down on this rusting latticedpatio chair and called him. It was a cloudyday, typical Indiana: the kind of weather thatboxes you in. Our little backyard was domin-ated by my childhood swing set, which waslooking pretty waterlogged and pathetic.

Augustus picked up on the third ring.“Hazel Grace,” he said.

“So welcome to the sweet torture ofreading An Imperial—” I stopped when I

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heard violent sobbing on the other end of theline. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m grand,” Augustus answered. “I am,however, with Isaac, who seems to be de-compensating.” More wailing. Like the deathcries of some injured animal. Gus turned hisattention to Isaac. “Dude. Dude. Does Sup-port Group Hazel make this better or worse?Isaac. Focus. On. Me.” After a minute, Gussaid to me, “Can you meet us at my house in,say, twenty minutes?”

“Sure,” I said, and hung up.

If you could drive in a straight line, it wouldonly take like five minutes to get from myhouse to Augustus’s house, but you can’tdrive in a straight line because Holliday Parkis between us.

Even though it was a geographic incon-venience, I really liked Holliday Park. WhenI was a little kid, I would wade in the WhiteRiver with my dad and there was always this

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great moment when he would throw me upin the air, just toss me away from him, and Iwould reach out my arms as I flew and hewould reach out his arms, and then we wouldboth see that our arms were not going totouch and no one was going to catch me, andit would kind of scare the shit out of both ofus in the best possible way, and then I wouldlegs-flailingly hit the water and then come upfor air uninjured and the current wouldbring me back to him as I said again, Daddy,again.

I pulled into the driveway right next toan old black Toyota sedan I figured wasIsaac’s car. Carting the tank behind me, Iwalked up to the door. I knocked. Gus’s dadanswered.

“Just Hazel,” he said. “Nice to see you.”“Augustus said I could come over?”“Yeah, he and Isaac are in the base-

ment.” At which point there was a wail frombelow. “That would be Isaac,” Gus’s dad said,

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and shook his head slowly. “Cindy had to gofor a drive. The sound . . .” he said, driftingoff. “Anyway, I guess you’re wanted down-stairs. Can I carry your, uh, tank?” he asked.

“Nah, I’m good. Thanks, though, Mr.Waters.”

“Mark,” he said.I was kind of scared to go down there.

Listening to people howl in misery is notamong my favorite pastimes. But I went.

“Hazel Grace,” Augustus said as heheard my footsteps. “Isaac, Hazel from Sup-port Group is coming downstairs. Hazel, agentle reminder: Isaac is in the midst of apsychotic episode.”

Augustus and Isaac were sitting on thefloor in gaming chairs shaped like lazy Ls,staring up at a gargantuan television. Thescreen was split between Isaac’s point ofview on the left, and Augustus’s on the right.They were soldiers fighting in a bombed-outmodern city. I recognized the place from The

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Price of Dawn. As I approached, I saw noth-ing unusual: just two guys sitting in the light-wash of a huge television pretending to killpeople.

Only when I got parallel to them did Isee Isaac’s face. Tears streamed down hisreddened cheeks in a continual flow, his facea taut mask of pain. He stared at the screen,not even glancing at me, and howled, all thewhile pounding away at his controller. “Howare you, Hazel?” asked Augustus.

“I’m okay,” I said. “Isaac?” No response.Not even the slightest hint that he was awareof my existence. Just the tears flowing downhis face onto his black T-shirt.

Augustus glanced away from the screenever so briefly. “You look nice,” he said. I waswearing this just-past-the-knees dress I’dhad forever. “Girls think they’re only allowedto wear dresses on formal occasions, but Ilike a woman who says, you know, I’m goingover to see a boy who is having a nervous

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breakdown, a boy whose connection to thesense of sight itself is tenuous, and goshdang it, I am going to wear a dress for him.”

“And yet,” I said, “Isaac won’t so muchas glance over at me. Too in love with Mon-ica, I suppose,” which resulted in a cata-strophic sob.

“Bit of a touchy subject,” Augustus ex-plained. “Isaac, I don’t know about you, but Ihave the vague sense that we are being out-flanked.” And then back to me, “Isaac andMonica are no longer a going concern, but hedoesn’t want to talk about it. He just wantsto cry and play Counterinsurgence 2: ThePrice of Dawn.”

“Fair enough,” I said.“Isaac, I feel a growing concern about

our position. If you agree, head over to thatpower station, and I’ll cover you.” Isaac rantoward a nondescript building while Augus-tus fired a machine gun wildly in a series ofquick bursts, running behind him.

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“Anyway,” Augustus said to me, “itdoesn’t hurt to talk to him. If you have anysage words of feminine advice.”

“I actually think his response is probablyappropriate,” I said as a burst of gunfirefrom Isaac killed an enemy who’d peeked hishead out from behind the burned-out huskof a pickup truck.

Augustus nodded at the screen. “Paindemands to be felt,” he said, which was a linefrom An Imperial Affliction. “You’re surethere’s no one behind us?” he asked Isaac.Moments later, tracer bullets started whizz-ing over their heads. “Oh, goddamn it,Isaac,” Augustus said. “I don’t mean to criti-cize you in your moment of great weakness,but you’ve allowed us to be outflanked, andnow there’s nothing between the terroristsand the school.” Isaac’s character took offrunning toward the fire, zigging and zaggingdown a narrow alleyway.

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“You could go over the bridge and circleback,” I said, a tactic I knew about thanks toThe Price of Dawn.

Augustus sighed. “Sadly, the bridge isalready under insurgent control due to ques-tionable strategizing by my bereft cohort.”

“Me?” Isaac said, his voice breathy.“Me?! You’re the one who suggested we holeup in the freaking power station.”

Gus turned away from the screen for asecond and flashed his crooked smile atIsaac. “I knew you could talk, buddy,” hesaid. “Now let’s go save some fictionalschoolchildren.”

Together, they ran down the alleyway,firing and hiding at the right moments, untilthey reached this one-story, single-roomschoolhouse. They crouched behind a wallacross the street and picked off the enemyone by one.

“Why do they want to get into theschool?” I asked.

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“They want the kids as hostages,”Augustus answered. His shoulders roundedover his controller, slamming buttons, hisforearms taut, veins visible. Isaac leaned to-ward the screen, the controller dancing in histhin-fingered hands. “Get it get it get it,”Augustus said. The waves of terrorists con-tinued, and they mowed down every one,their shooting astonishingly precise, as it hadto be, lest they fire into the school.

“Grenade! Grenade!” Augustus shoutedas something arced across the screen,bounced in the doorway of the school, andthen rolled against the door.

Isaac dropped his controller in disap-pointment. “If the bastards can’t take host-ages, they just kill them and claim we did it.”

“Cover me!” Augustus said as he jumpedout from behind the wall and raced towardthe school. Isaac fumbled for his controllerand then started firing while the bulletsrained down on Augustus, who was shot

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once and then twice but still ran, Augustusshouting, “YOU CAN’T KILL MAXMAYHEM!” and with a final flurry of buttoncombinations, he dove onto the grenade,which detonated beneath him. His dis-membered body exploded like a geyser andthe screen went red. A throaty voice said,“MISSION FAILURE,” but Augustus seemedto think otherwise as he smiled at his rem-nants on the screen. He reached into hispocket, pulled out a cigarette, and shoved itbetween his teeth. “Saved the kids,” he said.

“Temporarily,” I pointed out.“All salvation is temporary,” Augustus

shot back. “I bought them a minute. Maybethat’s the minute that buys them an hour,which is the hour that buys them a year. Noone’s gonna buy them forever, Hazel Grace,but my life bought them a minute. And that’snot nothing.”

“Whoa, okay,” I said. “We’re just talkingabout pixels.”

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He shrugged, as if he believed the gamemight be really real. Isaac was wailing again.Augustus snapped his head back to him.“Another go at the mission, corporal?”

Isaac shook his head no. He leaned overAugustus to look at me and through tightlystrung vocal cords said, “She didn’t want todo it after.”

“She didn’t want to dump a blind guy,” Isaid. He nodded, the tears not like tears somuch as a quiet metronome—steady,endless.

“She said she couldn’t handle it,” he toldme. “I’m about to lose my eyesight and shecan’t handle it.”

I was thinking about the word handle,and all the unholdable things that gethandled. “I’m sorry,” I said.

He wiped his sopping face with a sleeve.Behind his glasses, Isaac’s eyes seemed sobig that everything else on his face kind ofdisappeared and it was just these

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disembodied floating eyes staring at me—onereal, one glass. “It’s unacceptable,” he toldme. “It’s totally unacceptable.”

“Well, to be fair,” I said, “I mean, sheprobably can’t handle it. Neither can you,but she doesn’t have to handle it. And youdo.”

“I kept saying ‘always’ to her today, ‘al-ways always always,’ and she just kept talk-ing over me and not saying it back. It waslike I was already gone, you know? ‘Always’was a promise! How can you just break thepromise?”

“Sometimes people don’t understandthe promises they’re making when they makethem,” I said.

Isaac shot me a look. “Right, of course.But you keep the promise anyway. That’swhat love is. Love is keeping the promiseanyway. Don’t you believe in true love?”

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I didn’t answer. I didn’t have an answer.But I thought that if true love did exist, thatwas a pretty good definition of it.

“Well, I believe in true love,” Isaac said.“And I love her. And she promised. Shepromised me always.” He stood and took astep toward me. I pushed myself up, thinkinghe wanted a hug or something, but then hejust spun around, like he couldn’t rememberwhy he’d stood up in the first place, and thenAugustus and I both saw this rage settle intohis face.

“Isaac,” Gus said.“What?”“You look a little . . . Pardon the double

entendre, my friend, but there’s something alittle worrisome in your eyes.”

Suddenly Isaac started kicking the crapout of his gaming chair, which somersaultedback toward Gus’s bed. “Here we go,” saidAugustus. Isaac chased after the chair andkicked it again. “Yes,” Augustus said. “Get it.

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Kick the shit out of that chair!” Isaac kickedthe chair again, until it bounced againstGus’s bed, and then he grabbed one of thepillows and started slamming it against thewall between the bed and the trophy shelfabove.

Augustus looked over at me, cigarettestill in his mouth, and half smiled. “I can’tstop thinking about that book.”

“I know, right?”“He never said what happens to the oth-

er characters?”“No,” I told him. Isaac was still throt-

tling the wall with the pillow. “He moved toAmsterdam, which makes me think maybehe is writing a sequel featuring the DutchTulip Man, but he hasn’t published anything.He’s never interviewed. He doesn’t seem tobe online. I’ve written him a bunch of lettersasking what happens to everyone, but henever responds. So . . . yeah.” I stopped

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talking because Augustus didn’t appear to belistening. Instead, he was squinting at Isaac.

“Hold on,” he mumbled to me. Hewalked over to Isaac and grabbed him by theshoulders. “Dude, pillows don’t break. Trysomething that breaks.”

Isaac reached for a basketball trophyfrom the shelf above the bed and then held itover his head as if waiting for permission.“Yes,” Augustus said. “Yes!” The trophysmashed against the floor, the plastic basket-ball player’s arm splintering off, still grasp-ing its ball. Isaac stomped on the trophy.“Yes!” Augustus said. “Get it!”

And then back to me, “I’ve been lookingfor a way to tell my father that I actually sortof hate basketball, and I think we’ve foundit.” The trophies came down one after theother, and Isaac stomped on them andscreamed while Augustus and I stood a fewfeet away, bearing witness to the madness.The poor, mangled bodies of plastic

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basketballers littered the carpeted ground:here, a ball palmed by a disembodied hand;there, two torsoless legs caught midjump.Isaac kept attacking the trophies, jumping onthem with both feet, screaming, breathless,sweaty, until finally he collapsed on top ofthe jagged trophic remnants.

Augustus stepped toward him andlooked down. “Feel better?” he asked.

“No,” Isaac mumbled, his chest heaving.“That’s the thing about pain,” Augustus

said, and then glanced back at me. “It de-mands to be felt.”

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CHAPTER FIVE

I did not speak to Augustus again for abouta week. I had called him on the Night of theBroken Trophies, so per tradition it was histurn to call. But he didn’t. Now, it wasn’t as ifI held my phone in my sweaty hand all day,staring at it while wearing my Special YellowDress, patiently waiting for my gentlemancaller to live up to his sobriquet. I went aboutmy life: I met Kaitlyn and her (cute butfrankly not Augustinian) boyfriend for coffeeone afternoon; I ingested my recommendeddaily allowance of Phalanxifor; I attended

classes three mornings that week at MCC;and every night, I sat down to dinner withmy mom and dad.

Sunday night, we had pizza with greenpeppers and broccoli. We were seatedaround our little circular table in the kitchenwhen my phone started singing, but I wasn’tallowed to check it because we have a strictno-phones-during-dinner rule.

So I ate a little while Mom and Dadtalked about this earthquake that had justhappened in Papua New Guinea. They met inthe Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea, andso whenever anything happened there, evensomething terrible, it was like all of a suddenthey were not large sedentary creatures, butthe young and idealistic and self-sufficientand rugged people they had once been, andtheir rapture was such that they didn’t evenglance over at me as I ate faster than I’d evereaten, transmitting items from my plate intomy mouth with a speed and ferocity that left

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me quite out of breath, which of course mademe worry that my lungs were again swim-ming in a rising pool of fluid. I banished thethought as best I could. I had a PET scanscheduled in a couple weeks. If somethingwas wrong, I’d find out soon enough. Noth-ing to be gained by worrying between nowand then.

And yet still I worried. I liked being aperson. I wanted to keep at it. Worry is yetanother side effect of dying.

Finally I finished and said, “Can I be ex-cused?” and they hardly even paused fromtheir conversation about the strengths andweaknesses of Guinean infrastructure. Igrabbed my phone from my purse on the kit-chen counter and checked my recent calls.Augustus Waters.

I went out the back door into the twi-light. I could see the swing set, and I thoughtabout walking out there and swinging while I

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talked to him, but it seemed pretty far awaygiven that eating tired me.

Instead, I lay down in the grass on thepatio’s edge, looked up at Orion, the onlyconstellation I could recognize, and calledhim.

“Hazel Grace,” he said.“Hi,” I said. “How are you?”“Grand,” he said. “I have been wanting

to call you on a nearly minutely basis, but Ihave been waiting until I could form a coher-ent thought in re An Imperial Affliction.”(He said “in re.” He really did. That boy.)

“And?” I said.“I think it’s, like. Reading it, I just kept

feeling like, like.”“Like?” I asked, teasing him.“Like it was a gift?” he said askingly.

“Like you’d given me something important.”“Oh,” I said quietly.“That’s cheesy,” he said. “I’m sorry.”“No,” I said. “No. Don’t apologize.”

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“But it doesn’t end.”“Yeah,” I said.“Torture. I totally get it, like, I get that

she died or whatever.”“Right, I assume so,” I said.“And okay, fair enough, but there is this

unwritten contract between author and read-er and I think not ending your book kind ofviolates that contract.”

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling defensiveof Peter Van Houten. “That’s part of what Ilike about the book in some ways. It portraysdeath truthfully. You die in the middle ofyour life, in the middle of a sentence. But Ido—God, I do really want to know what hap-pens to everyone else. That’s what I askedhim in my letters. But he, yeah, he neveranswers.”

“Right. You said he is a recluse?”“Correct.”“Impossible to track down.”“Correct.”

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“Utterly unreachable,” Augustus said.“Unfortunately so,” I said.“‘Dear Mr. Waters,’” he answered. “‘I am

writing to thank you for your electronic cor-respondence, received via Ms. Vliegenthartthis sixth of April, from the United States ofAmerica, insofar as geography can be said toexist in our triumphantly digitizedcontemporaneity.’”

“Augustus, what the hell?”“He has an assistant,” Augustus said.

“Lidewij Vliegenthart. I found her. I emailedher. She gave him the email. He respondedvia her email account.”

“Okay, okay. Keep reading.”“‘My response is being written with ink

and paper in the glorious tradition of our an-cestors and then transcribed by Ms. Vlie-genthart into a series of 1s and 0s to travelthrough the insipid web which has lately en-snared our species, so I apologize for any er-rors or omissions that may result.

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“‘Given the entertainment bacchanaliaat the disposal of young men and women ofyour generation, I am grateful to anyoneanywhere who sets aside the hours necessaryto read my little book. But I am particularlyindebted to you, sir, both for your kindwords about An Imperial Affliction and fortaking the time to tell me that the book, andhere I quote you directly, “meant a greatdeal” to you.

“‘This comment, however, leads me towonder: What do you mean by meant? Giventhe final futility of our struggle, is the fleetingjolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Oris the only value in passing the time as com-fortably as possible? What should a storyseek to emulate, Augustus? A ringing alarm?A call to arms? A morphine drip? Of course,like all interrogation of the universe, this lineof inquiry inevitably reduces us to askingwhat it means to be human and whether—toborrow a phrase from the angst-encumbered

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sixteen-year-olds you no doubt revile—thereis a point to it all.

“‘I fear there is not, my friend, and thatyou would receive scant encouragementfrom further encounters with my writing.But to answer your question: No, I have notwritten anything else, nor will I. I do not feelthat continuing to share my thoughts withreaders would benefit either them or me.Thank you again for your generous email.

“‘Yours most sincerely, Peter VanHouten, via Lidewij Vliegenthart.’”

“Wow,” I said. “Are you making thisup?”

“Hazel Grace, could I, with my meagerintellectual capacities, make up a letter fromPeter Van Houten featuring phrases like ‘ourtriumphantly digitized contemporaneity’?”

“You could not,” I allowed. “Can I, can Ihave the email address?”

“Of course,” Augustus said, like it wasnot the best gift ever.

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I spent the next two hours writing an emailto Peter Van Houten. It seemed to get worseeach time I rewrote it, but I couldn’t stopmyself.

Dear Mr. Peter Van Houten(c/o Lidewij Vliegenthart),

My name is Hazel Grace Lancaster.My friend Augustus Waters, who readAn Imperial Affliction at my recom-mendation, just received an email fromyou at this address. I hope you will notmind that Augustus shared that emailwith me.

Mr. Van Houten, I understand fromyour email to Augustus that you are notplanning to publish any more books. Ina way, I am disappointed, but I’m alsorelieved: I never have to worry whetheryour next book will live up to the

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magnificent perfection of the original.As a three-year survivor of Stage IV can-cer, I can tell you that you got everythingright in An Imperial Affliction. Or atleast you got me right. Your book has away of telling me what I’m feeling beforeI even feel it, and I’ve reread it dozens oftimes.

I wonder, though, if you wouldmind answering a couple questions Ihave about what happens after the endof the novel. I understand the book endsbecause Anna dies or becomes too ill tocontinue writing it, but I would reallylike to know what happens to Anna’smom—whether she married the DutchTulip Man, whether she ever has anoth-er child, and whether she stays at 917 W.Temple, etc. Also, is the Dutch TulipMan a fraud or does he really love them?What happens to Anna’s friends—partic-ularly Claire and Jake? Do they stay

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together? And lastly—I realize that thisis the kind of deep and thoughtful ques-tion you always hoped your readerswould ask—what becomes of Sisyphusthe Hamster? These questions havehaunted me for years—and I don’t knowhow long I have left to get answers tothem.

I know these are not important lit-erary questions and that your book isfull of important literary questions, but Iwould just really like to know.

And of course, if you ever do decideto write anything else, even if you don’twant to publish it, I’d love to read it.Frankly, I’d read your grocery lists.

Yours with great admiration,Hazel Grace Lancaster(age 16)

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After I sent it, I called Augustus back, and westayed up late talking about An ImperialAffliction, and I read him the Emily Dickin-son poem that Van Houten had used for thetitle, and he said I had a good voice for read-ing and didn’t pause too long for the linebreaks, and then he told me that the sixthPrice of Dawn book, The Blood Approves,begins with a quote from a poem. It took hima minute to find the book, but finally he readthe quote to me. “‘Say your life broke down.The last good kiss / You had was years ago.’”

“Not bad,” I said. “Bit pretentious. I be-lieve Max Mayhem would refer to that as‘sissy shit.’”

“Yes, with his teeth gritted, no doubt.God, Mayhem grits his teeth a lot in thesebooks. He’s definitely going to get TMJ, if hesurvives all this combat.” And then after asecond, Gus asked, “When was the last goodkiss you had?”

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I thought about it. My kissing—all pre-diagnosis—had been uncomfortable andslobbery, and on some level it always felt likekids playing at being grown. But of course ithad been a while. “Years ago,” I said finally.“You?”

“I had a few good kisses with my ex-girl-friend, Caroline Mathers.”

“Years ago?”“The last one was just less than a year

ago.”“What happened?”“During the kiss?”“No, with you and Caroline.”“Oh,” he said. And then after a second,

“Caroline is no longer suffering frompersonhood.”

“Oh,” I said.“Yeah,” he said.“I’m sorry,” I said. I’d known plenty of

dead people, of course. But I’d never datedone. I couldn’t even imagine it, really.

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“Not your fault, Hazel Grace. We’re alljust side effects, right?”

“‘Barnacles on the container ship of con-sciousness,’” I said, quoting AIA.

“Okay,” he said. “I gotta go to sleep. It’salmost one.”

“Okay,” I said.“Okay,” he said.I giggled and said, “Okay.” And then the

line was quiet but not dead. I almost felt likehe was there in my room with me, but in away it was better, like I was not in my roomand he was not in his, but instead we weretogether in some invisible and tenuous thirdspace that could only be visited on thephone.

“Okay,” he said after forever. “Maybeokay will be our always.”

“Okay,” I said.It was Augustus who finally hung up.

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Peter Van Houten replied to Augustus’semail four hours after he sent it, but twodays later, Van Houten still hadn’t replied tome. Augustus assured me it was because myemail was better and required a morethoughtful response, that Van Houten wasbusy writing answers to my questions, andthat brilliant prose took time. But still Iworried.

On Wednesday during American Poetryfor Dummies 101, I got a text from Augustus:

Isaac out of surgery. It went well. He’sofficially NEC.

NEC meant “no evidence of cancer.” Asecond text came a few seconds later.

I mean, he’s blind. So that’s unfortunate.

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That afternoon, Mom consented to loanme the car so I could drive down to Memori-al to check in on Isaac.

I found my way to his room on the fifthfloor, knocking even though the door wasopen, and a woman’s voice said, “Come in.”It was a nurse who was doing something tothe bandages on Isaac’s eyes. “Hey, Isaac,” Isaid.

And he said, “Mon?”“Oh, no. Sorry. No, it’s, um, Hazel. Um,

Support Group Hazel? Night-of-the-broken-trophies Hazel?”

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, people keep sayingmy other senses will improve to compensate,but CLEARLY NOT YET. Hi, Support GroupHazel. Come over here so I can examine yourface with my hands and see deeper into yoursoul than a sighted person ever could.”

“He’s kidding,” the nurse said.“Yes,” I said. “I realize.”

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I took a few steps toward the bed. Ipulled a chair up and sat down, took hishand. “Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he said back. Then nothing for awhile.

“How you feeling?” I asked.“Okay,” he said. “I don’t know.”“You don’t know what?” I asked. I

looked at his hand because I didn’t want tolook at his face blindfolded by bandages.Isaac bit his nails, and I could see someblood on the corners of a couple of hiscuticles.

“She hasn’t even visited,” he said. “Imean, we were together fourteen months.Fourteen months is a long time. God, thathurts.” Isaac let go of my hand to fumble forhis pain pump, which you hit to give yourselfa wave of narcotics.

The nurse, having finished the bandagechange, stepped back. “It’s only been a day,Isaac,” she said, vaguely condescending.

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“You’ve gotta give yourself time to heal. Andfourteen months isn’t that long, not in thescheme of things. You’re just getting started,buddy. You’ll see.”

The nurse left. “Is she gone?”I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see

me nod. “Yeah,” I said.“I’ll see? Really? Did she seriously say

that?”“Qualities of a Good Nurse: Go,” I said.“1. Doesn’t pun on your disability,” Isaac

said.“2. Gets blood on the first try,” I said.“Seriously, that is huge. I mean is this

my freaking arm or a dartboard? 3. No con-descending voice.”

“How are you doing, sweetie?” I asked,cloying. “I’m going to stick you with a needlenow. There might be a little ouchie.”

“Is my wittle fuffywump sickywicky?” heanswered. And then after a second, “Most of

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them are good, actually. I just want the hellout of this place.”

“This place as in the hospital?”“That, too,” he said. His mouth

tightened. I could see the pain. “Honestly, Ithink a hell of a lot more about Monica thanmy eye. Is that crazy? That’s crazy.”

“It’s a little crazy,” I allowed.“But I believe in true love, you know? I

don’t believe that everybody gets to keeptheir eyes or not get sick or whatever, buteverybody should have true love, and itshould last at least as long as your life does.”

“Yeah,” I said.“I just wish the whole thing hadn’t

happened sometimes. The whole cancerthing.” His speech was slowing down. Themedicine working.

“I’m sorry,” I said.“Gus was here earlier. He was here when

I woke up. Took off school. He . . .” His head

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turned to the side a little. “It’s better,” hesaid quietly.

“The pain?” I asked. He nodded a little.“Good,” I said. And then, like the bitch I

am: “You were saying something aboutGus?” But he was gone.

I went downstairs to the tiny window-less gift shop and asked the decrepit volun-teer sitting on a stool behind a cash registerwhat kind of flowers smell the strongest.

“They all smell the same. They getsprayed with Super Scent,” she said.

“Really?”“Yeah, they just squirt ’em with it.”I opened the cooler to her left and

sniffed at a dozen roses, and then leanedover some carnations. Same smell, and lotsof it. The carnations were cheaper, so Igrabbed a dozen yellow ones. They cost four-teen dollars. I went back into the room; hismom was there, holding his hand. She wasyoung and really pretty.

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“Are you a friend?” she asked, whichstruck me as one of those unintentionallybroad and unanswerable questions.

“Um, yeah,” I said. “I’m from SupportGroup. These are for him.”

She took them and placed them in herlap. “Do you know Monica?” she asked.

I shook my head no.“Well, he’s sleeping,” she said.“Yeah. I talked to him a little before,

when they were doing the bandages orwhatever.”

“I hated leaving him for that but I had topick up Graham at school,” she said.

“He did okay,” I told her. She nodded. “Ishould let him sleep.” She nodded again. Ileft.

The next morning I woke up early andchecked my email first thing.

lidewij.vliegenthart@gmail.com had fi-nally replied.

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Dear Ms. Lancaster,

I fear your faith has been mis-placed—but then, faith usually is. I can-not answer your questions, at least notin writing, because to write out such an-swers would constitute a sequel to AnImperial Affliction, which you mightpublish or otherwise share on the net-work that has replaced the brains ofyour generation. There is the telephone,but then you might record the conversa-tion. Not that I don’t trust you, ofcourse, but I don’t trust you. Alas, dearHazel, I could never answer such ques-tions except in person, and you arethere, while I am here.

That noted, I must confess that theunexpected receipt of your correspond-ence via Ms. Vliegenthart has delightedme: What a wondrous thing to know

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that I made something useful toyou—even if that book seems so distantfrom me that I feel it was written by adifferent man altogether. (The author ofthat novel was so thin, so frail, so com-paratively optimistic!)

Should you find yourself in Amster-dam, however, please do pay a visit atyour leisure. I am usually home. I wouldeven allow you a peek at my grocerylists.

Yours most sincerely,Peter Van Houtenc/o Lidewij Vliegenthart

“WHAT?!” I shouted aloud. “WHAT IS THISLIFE?”

Mom ran in. “What’s wrong?”“Nothing,” I assured her.Still nervous, Mom knelt down to check

on Philip to ensure he was condensing

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oxygen appropriately. I imagined sitting at asun-drenched café with Peter Van Houten ashe leaned across the table on his elbows,speaking in a soft voice so no one else wouldhear the truth of what happened to the char-acters I’d spent years thinking about. He’dsaid he couldn’t tell me except in person, andthen invited me to Amsterdam. I explainedthis to Mom, and then said, “I have to go.”

“Hazel, I love you, and you know I’d doanything for you, but we don’t—we don’thave the money for international travel, andthe expense of getting equipment overthere—love, it’s just not—”

“Yeah,” I said, cutting her off. I realizedI’d been silly even to consider it. “Don’tworry about it.” But she looked worried.

“It’s really important to you, yeah?” sheasked, sitting down, a hand on my calf.

“It would be pretty amazing,” I said, “tobe the only person who knows what happensbesides him.”

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“That would be amazing,” she said. “I’lltalk to your father.”

“No, don’t,” I said. “Just, seriously, don’tspend any money on it please. I’ll think ofsomething.”

It occurred to me that the reason myparents had no money was me. I’d sappedthe family savings with Phalanxifor copays,and Mom couldn’t work because she hadtaken on the full-time profession of HoveringOver Me. I didn’t want to put them even fur-ther into debt.

I told Mom I wanted to call Augustus toget her out of the room, because I couldn’thandle her I-can’t-make-my-daughter’s-dreams-come-true sad face.

Augustus Waters–style, I read him theletter in lieu of saying hello.

“Wow,” he said.“I know, right?” I said. “How am I going

to get to Amsterdam?”

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“Do you have a Wish?” he asked, refer-ring to this organization, The Genie Founda-tion, which is in the business of granting sickkids one wish.

“No,” I said. “I used my Wish pre-Miracle.”

“What’d you do?”I sighed loudly. “I was thirteen,” I said.“Not Disney,” he said.I said nothing.“You did not go to Disney World.”I said nothing.“Hazel GRACE!” he shouted. “You did

not use your one dying Wish to go to DisneyWorld with your parents.”

“Also Epcot Center,” I mumbled.“Oh, my God,” Augustus said. “I can’t

believe I have a crush on a girl with suchcliché wishes.”

“I was thirteen,” I said again, althoughof course I was only thinking crush crushcrush crush crush. I was flattered but

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changed the subject immediately. “Shouldn’tyou be in school or something?”

“I’m playing hooky to hang out withIsaac, but he’s sleeping, so I’m in the atriumdoing geometry.”

“How’s he doing?” I asked.“I can’t tell if he’s just not ready to con-

front the seriousness of his disability or if hereally does care more about getting dumpedby Monica, but he won’t talk about anythingelse.”

“Yeah,” I said. “How long’s he gonna bein the hospital?”

“Few days. Then he goes to this rehab orsomething for a while, but he gets to sleep athome, I think.”

“Sucks,” I said.“I see his mom. I gotta go.”“Okay,” I said.“Okay,” he answered. I could hear his

crooked smile.

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On Saturday, my parents and I went down tothe farmers’ market in Broad Ripple. It wassunny, a rarity for Indiana in April, andeveryone at the farmers’ market was wearingshort sleeves even though the temperaturedidn’t quite justify it. We Hoosiers are ex-cessively optimistic about summer. Momand I sat next to each other on a benchacross from a goat-soap maker, a man inoveralls who had to explain to every singleperson who walked by that yes, they were hisgoats, and no, goat soap does not smell likegoats.

My phone rang. “Who is it?” Mom askedbefore I could even check.

“I don’t know,” I said. It was Gus,though.

“Are you currently at your house?” heasked.

“Um, no,” I said.

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“That was a trick question. I knew theanswer, because I am currently at yourhouse.”

“Oh. Um. Well, we are on our way, Iguess?”

“Awesome. See you soon.”

Augustus Waters was sitting on the frontstep as we pulled into the driveway. He washolding a bouquet of bright orange tulips justbeginning to bloom, and wearing an IndianaPacers jersey under his fleece, a wardrobechoice that seemed utterly out of character,although it did look quite good on him. Hepushed himself up off the stoop, handed methe tulips, and asked, “Wanna go on a pic-nic?” I nodded, taking the flowers.

My dad walked up behind me and shookGus’s hand.

“Is that a Rik Smits jersey?” my dadasked.

“Indeed it is.”

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“God, I loved that guy,” Dad said, andimmediately they were engrossed in a bas-ketball conversation I could not (and did notwant to) join, so I took my tulips inside.

“Do you want me to put those in avase?” Mom asked as I walked in, a hugesmile on her face.

“No, it’s okay,” I told her. If we’d putthem in a vase in the living room, they wouldhave been everyone’s flowers. I wanted themto be my flowers.

I went to my room but didn’t change. Ibrushed my hair and teeth and put on somelip gloss and the smallest possible dab of per-fume. I kept looking at the flowers. Theywere aggressively orange, almost too orangeto be pretty. I didn’t have a vase or anything,so I took my toothbrush out of my tooth-brush holder and filled it halfway with waterand left the flowers there in the bathroom.

When I reentered my room, I could hearpeople talking, so I sat on the edge of my bed

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for a while and listened through my hollowbedroom door:

Dad: “So you met Hazel at SupportGroup.”

Augustus: “Yes, sir. This is a lovelyhouse you’ve got. I like your artwork.”

Mom: “Thank you, Augustus.”Dad: “You’re a survivor yourself, then?”Augustus: “I am. I didn’t cut this fella off

for the sheer unadulterated pleasure of it, al-though it is an excellent weight-loss strategy.Legs are heavy!”

Dad: “And how’s your health now?”Augustus: “NEC for fourteen months.”Mom: “That’s wonderful. The treatment

options these days—it really is remarkable.”Augustus: “I know. I’m lucky.”Dad: “You have to understand that

Hazel is still sick, Augustus, and will be forthe rest of her life. She’ll want to keep upwith you, but her lungs—”

At which point I emerged, silencing him.

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“So where are you going?” asked Mom.Augustus stood up and leaned over to her,whispering the answer, and then held a fin-ger to his lips. “Shh,” he told her. “It’s asecret.”

Mom smiled. “You’ve got your phone?”she asked me. I held it up as evidence, tiltedmy oxygen cart onto its front wheels, andstarted walking. Augustus hustled over, of-fering me his arm, which I took. My fingerswrapped around his biceps.

Unfortunately, he insisted upon driving,so the surprise could be a surprise. As weshuddered toward our destination, I said,“You nearly charmed the pants off my mom.”

“Yeah, and your dad is a Smits fan,which helps. You think they liked me?”

“Sure they did. Who cares, though?They’re just parents.”

“They’re your parents,” he said, glancingover at me. “Plus, I like being liked. Is thatcrazy?”

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“Well, you don’t have to rush to holddoors open or smother me in complimentsfor me to like you.” He slammed the brakes,and I flew forward hard enough that mybreathing felt weird and tight. I thought ofthe PET scan. Don’t worry. Worry is useless.I worried anyway.

We burned rubber, roaring away from astop sign before turning left onto the mis-nomered Grandview (there’s a view of a golfcourse, I guess, but nothing grand). The onlything I could think of in this direction wasthe cemetery. Augustus reached into the cen-ter console, flipped open a full pack of cigar-ettes, and removed one.

“Do you ever throw them away?” I askedhim.

“One of the many benefits of notsmoking is that packs of cigarettes lastforever,” he answered. “I’ve had this one foralmost a year. A few of them are broken nearthe filters, but I think this pack could easily

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get me to my eighteenth birthday.” He heldthe filter between his fingers, then put it inhis mouth. “So, okay,” he said. “Okay. Namesome things that you never see inIndianapolis.”

“Um. Skinny adults,” I said.He laughed. “Good. Keep going.”“Mmm, beaches. Family-owned restaur-

ants. Topography.”“All excellent examples of things we

lack. Also, culture.”“Yeah, we are a bit short on culture,” I

said, finally realizing where he was takingme. “Are we going to the museum?”

“In a manner of speaking.”“Oh, are we going to that park or

whatever?”Gus looked a bit deflated. “Yes, we are

going to that park or whatever,” he said.“You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?”

“Um, figured what out?”“Nothing.”

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There was this park behind the museumwhere a bunch of artists had made big sculp-tures. I’d heard about it but had never vis-ited. We drove past the museum and parkedright next to this basketball court filled withhuge blue and red steel arcs that imaginedthe path of a bouncing ball.

We walked down what passes for a hillin Indianapolis to this clearing where kidswere climbing all over this huge oversizeskeleton sculpture. The bones were eachabout waist high, and the thighbone waslonger than me. It looked like a child’s draw-ing of a skeleton rising up out of the ground.

My shoulder hurt. I worried the cancerhad spread from my lungs. I imagined thetumor metastasizing into my own bones,boring holes into my skeleton, a slitheringeel of insidious intent. “Funky Bones,”Augustus said. “Created by Joep VanLieshout.”

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“Sounds Dutch.”“He is,” Gus said. “So is Rik Smits. So

are tulips.” Gus stopped in the middle of theclearing with the bones right in front of usand slipped his backpack off one shoulder,then the other. He unzipped it, producing anorange blanket, a pint of orange juice, andsome sandwiches wrapped in plastic wrapwith the crusts cut off.

“What’s with all the orange?” I asked,still not wanting to let myself imagine that allthis would lead to Amsterdam.

“National color of the Netherlands, ofcourse. You remember William of Orangeand everything?”

“He wasn’t on the GED test.” I smiled,trying to contain my excitement.

“Sandwich?” he asked.“Let me guess,” I said.“Dutch cheese. And tomato. The toma-

toes are from Mexico. Sorry.”

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“You’re always such a disappointment,Augustus. Couldn’t you have at least gottenorange tomatoes?”

He laughed, and we ate our sandwichesin silence, watching the kids play on thesculpture. I couldn’t very well ask him aboutit, so I just sat there surrounded by Dutch-ness, feeling awkward and hopeful.

In the distance, soaked in the unblem-ished sunlight so rare and precious in ourhometown, a gaggle of kids made a skeletoninto a playground, jumping back and forthamong the prosthetic bones.

“Two things I love about this sculpture,”Augustus said. He was holding the unlit ci-garette between his fingers, flicking at it as ifto get rid of the ash. He placed it back in hismouth. “First, the bones are just far enoughapart that if you’re a kid, you cannot resistthe urge to jump between them. Like, youjust have to jump from rib cage to skull.Which means that, second, the sculpture

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essentially forces children to play on bones.The symbolic resonances are endless, HazelGrace.”

“You do love symbols,” I said, hoping tosteer the conversation back toward the manysymbols of the Netherlands at our picnic.

“Right, about that. You are probablywondering why you are eating a bad cheesesandwich and drinking orange juice and whyI am wearing the jersey of a Dutchman whoplayed a sport I have come to loathe.”

“It has crossed my mind,” I said.“Hazel Grace, like so many children be-

fore you—and I say this with great affec-tion—you spent your Wish hastily, with littlecare for the consequences. The Grim Reaperwas staring you in the face and the fear of dy-ing with your Wish still in your proverbialpocket, ungranted, led you to rush towardthe first Wish you could think of, and you,like so many others, chose the cold and arti-ficial pleasures of the theme park.”

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“I actually had a great time on that trip.I met Goofy and Minn—”

“I am in the midst of a soliloquy! I wrotethis out and memorized it and if you inter-rupt me I will completely screw it up,”Augustus interrupted. “Please to be eatingyour sandwich and listening.” (The sandwichwas inedibly dry, but I smiled and took a biteanyway.) “Okay, where was I?”

“The artificial pleasures.”He returned the cigarette to its pack.

“Right, the cold and artificial pleasures of thetheme park. But let me submit that the realheroes of the Wish Factory are the youngmen and women who wait like Vladimir andEstragon wait for Godot and good Christiangirls wait for marriage. These young heroeswait stoically and without complaint for theirone true Wish to come along. Sure, it maynever come along, but at least they can resteasily in the grave knowing that they’ve done

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their little part to preserve the integrity ofthe Wish as an idea.

“But then again, maybe it will comealong: Maybe you’ll realize that your one trueWish is to visit the brilliant Peter VanHouten in his Amsterdamian exile, and youwill be glad indeed to have saved your Wish.”

Augustus stopped speaking long enoughthat I figured the soliloquy was over. “But Ididn’t save my Wish,” I said.

“Ah,” he said. And then, after what feltlike a practiced pause, he added, “But I savedmine.”

“Really?” I was surprised that Augustuswas Wish-eligible, what with being still inschool and a year into remission. You had tobe pretty sick for the Genies to hook you upwith a Wish.

“I got it in exchange for the leg,” he ex-plained. There was all this light on his face;he had to squint to look at me, which madehis nose crinkle adorably. “Now, I’m not

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going to give you my Wish or anything. But Ialso have an interest in meeting Peter VanHouten, and it wouldn’t make sense to meethim without the girl who introduced me tohis book.”

“It definitely wouldn’t,” I said.“So I talked to the Genies, and they are

in total agreement. They said Amsterdam islovely in the beginning of May. They pro-posed leaving May third and returning Mayseventh.”

“Augustus, really?”He reached over and touched my cheek

and for a moment I thought he might kissme. My body tensed, and I think he saw it,because he pulled his hand away.

“Augustus,” I said. “Really. You don’thave to do this.”

“Sure I do,” he said. “I found my Wish.”“God, you’re the best,” I told him.

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“I bet you say that to all the boys whofinance your international travel,” heanswered.

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CHAPTER SIX

Mom was folding my laundry while watch-ing this TV show called The View when I gothome. I told her that the tulips and theDutch artist and everything were all becauseAugustus was using his Wish to take me toAmsterdam. “That’s too much,” she said,shaking her head. “We can’t accept that froma virtual stranger.”

“He’s not a stranger. He’s easily mysecond best friend.”

“Behind Kaitlyn?”

“Behind you,” I said. It was true, but I’dmostly said it because I wanted to go toAmsterdam.

“I’ll ask Dr. Maria,” she said after amoment.

* * *

Dr. Maria said I couldn’t go to Amsterdamwithout an adult intimately familiar with mycase, which more or less meant either Momor Dr. Maria herself. (My dad understood mycancer the way I did: in the vague and in-complete way people understand electricalcircuits and ocean tides. But my mom knewmore about differentiated thyroid carcinomain adolescents than most oncologists.)

“So you’ll come,” I said. “The Genies willpay for it. The Genies are loaded.”

“But your father,” she said. “He wouldmiss us. It wouldn’t be fair to him, and hecan’t get time off work.”

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“Are you kidding? You don’t think Dadwould enjoy a few days of watching TVshows that are not about aspiring modelsand ordering pizza every night, using papertowels as plates so he doesn’t have to do thedishes?”

Mom laughed. Finally, she started to getexcited, typing tasks into her phone: She’dhave to call Gus’s parents and talk to theGenies about my medical needs and do theyhave a hotel yet and what are the best guide-books and we should do our research if weonly have three days, and so on. I kind of hada headache, so I downed a couple Advil anddecided to take a nap.

But I ended up just lying in bed and re-playing the whole picnic with Augustus. Icouldn’t stop thinking about the little mo-ment when I’d tensed up as he touched me.The gentle familiarity felt wrong, somehow. Ithought maybe it was how orchestrated thewhole thing had been: Augustus was

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amazing, but he’d overdone everything at thepicnic, right down to the sandwiches thatwere metaphorically resonant but tasted ter-rible and the memorized soliloquy that pre-vented conversation. It all felt Romantic, butnot romantic.

But the truth is that I had never wantedhim to kiss me, not in the way you are sup-posed to want these things. I mean, he wasgorgeous. I was attracted to him. I thoughtabout him in that way, to borrow a phrasefrom the middle school vernacular. But theactual touch, the realized touch . . . it was allwrong.

Then I found myself worrying I wouldhave to make out with him to get to Amster-dam, which is not the kind of thing you wantto be thinking, because (a) It shouldn’t’veeven been a question whether I wanted tokiss him, and (b) Kissing someone so thatyou can get a free trip is perilously close tofull-on hooking, and I have to confess that

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while I did not fancy myself a particularlygood person, I never thought my first realsexual action would be prostitutional.

But then again, he hadn’t tried to kissme; he’d only touched my face, which is noteven sexual. It was not a move designed toelicit arousal, but it was certainly a designedmove, because Augustus Waters was no im-proviser. So what had he been trying to con-vey? And why hadn’t I wanted to accept it?

At some point, I realized I was Kaitlyn-ing the encounter, so I decided to textKaitlyn and ask for some advice. She calledimmediately.

“I have a boy problem,” I said.“DELICIOUS,” Kaitlyn responded. I told

her all about it, complete with the awkwardface touching, leaving out only Amsterdamand Augustus’s name. “You’re sure he’s hot?”she asked when I was finished.

“Pretty sure,” I said.“Athletic?”

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“Yeah, he used to play basketball forNorth Central.”

“Wow. How’d you meet him?”“This hideous Support Group.”“Huh,” Kaitlyn said. “Out of curiosity,

how many legs does this guy have?”“Like, 1.4,” I said, smiling. Basketball

players were famous in Indiana, and al-though Kaitlyn didn’t go to North Central,her social connectivity was endless.

“Augustus Waters,” she said.“Um, maybe?”“Oh, my God. I’ve seen him at parties.

The things I would do to that boy. I mean,not now that I know you’re interested in him.But, oh, sweet holy Lord, I would ride thatone-legged pony all the way around thecorral.”

“Kaitlyn,” I said.“Sorry. Do you think you’d have to be on

top?”“Kaitlyn,” I said.

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“What were we talking about. Right, youand Augustus Waters. Maybe . . . are yougay?”

“I don’t think so? I mean, I definitelylike him.”

“Does he have ugly hands? Sometimesbeautiful people have ugly hands.”

“No, he has kind of amazing hands.”“Hmm,” she said.“Hmm,” I said.After a second, Kaitlyn said, “Remember

Derek? He broke up with me last week be-cause he’d decided there was something fun-damentally incompatible about us deepdown and that we’d only get hurt more if weplayed it out. He called it preemptive dump-ing. So maybe you have this premonitionthat there is something fundamentally in-compatible and you’re preempting thepreemption.”

“Hmm,” I said.“I’m just thinking out loud here.”

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“Sorry about Derek.”“Oh, I got over it, darling. It took me a

sleeve of Girl Scout Thin Mints and fortyminutes to get over that boy.”

I laughed. “Well, thanks, Kaitlyn.”“In the event you do hook up with him, I

expect lascivious details.”“But of course,” I said, and then Kaitlyn

made a kissy sound into the phone and Isaid, “Bye,” and she hung up.

* * *

I realized while listening to Kaitlyn that Ididn’t have a premonition of hurting him. Ihad a postmonition.

I pulled out my laptop and looked upCaroline Mathers. The physical similaritieswere striking: same steroidally round face,same nose, same approximate overall bodyshape. But her eyes were dark brown (mineare green) and her complexion was muchdarker—Italian or something.

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Thousands of people—literally thou-sands—had left condolence messages for her.It was an endless scroll of people who missedher, so many that it took me an hour of click-ing to get past the I’m sorry you’re dead wallposts to the I’m praying for you wall posts.She’d died a year ago of brain cancer. I wasable to click through to some of her pictures.Augustus was in a bunch of the earlier ones:pointing with a thumbs-up to the jagged scaracross her bald skull; arm in arm at Memori-al Hospital’s playground, with their backs fa-cing the camera; kissing while Caroline heldthe camera out, so you could only see theirnoses and closed eyes.

The most recent pictures were all of herbefore, when she was healthy, uploadedpostmortem by friends: a beautiful girl,wide-hipped and curvy, with long, straightdeadblack hair falling over her face. Myhealthy self looked very little like her healthyself. But our cancer selves might’ve been

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sisters. No wonder he’d stared at me the firsttime he saw me.

I kept clicking back to this one wall post,written two months ago, nine months aftershe died, by one of her friends. We all missyou so much. It just never ends. It feels likewe were all wounded in your battle,Caroline. I miss you. I love you.

After a while, Mom and Dad announcedit was time for dinner. I shut down the com-puter and got up, but I couldn’t get the wallpost out of my mind, and for some reason itmade me nervous and unhungry.

I kept thinking about my shoulder,which hurt, and also I still had the headache,but maybe only because I’d been thinkingabout a girl who’d died of brain cancer. Ikept telling myself to compartmentalize, tobe here now at the circular table (arguablytoo large in diameter for three people anddefinitely too large for two) with this soggybroccoli and a black-bean burger that all the

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ketchup in the world could not adequatelymoisten. I told myself that imagining a metin my brain or my shoulder would not affectthe invisible reality going on inside of me,and that therefore all such thoughts werewasted moments in a life composed of adefinitionally finite set of such moments. Ieven tried to tell myself to live my best lifetoday.

For the longest time I couldn’t figure outwhy something a stranger had written on theInternet to a different (and deceased)stranger was bothering me so much andmaking me worry that there was somethinginside my brain—which really did hurt, al-though I knew from years of experience thatpain is a blunt and nonspecific diagnosticinstrument.

Because there had not been an earth-quake in Papua New Guinea that day, myparents were all hyperfocused on me, and soI could not hide this flash flood of anxiety.

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“Is everything all right?” asked Mom as Iate.

“Uh-huh,” I said. I took a bite of burger.Swallowed. Tried to say something that anormal person whose brain was not drown-ing in panic would say. “Is there broccoli inthe burgers?”

“A little,” Dad said. “Pretty exciting thatyou might go to Amsterdam.”

“Yeah,” I said. I tried not to think aboutthe word wounded, which of course is a wayof thinking about it.

“Hazel,” Mom said. “Where are youright now?”

“Just thinking, I guess,” I said.“Twitterpated,” my dad said, smiling.“I am not a bunny, and I am not in love

with Gus Waters or anyone,” I answered,way too defensively. Wounded. Like CarolineMathers had been a bomb and when sheblew up everyone around her was left withembedded shrapnel.

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Dad asked me if I was working on any-thing for school. “I’ve got some very ad-vanced Algebra homework,” I told him. “Soadvanced that I couldn’t possibly explain itto a layperson.”

“And how’s your friend Isaac?”“Blind,” I said.“You’re being very teenagery today,”

Mom said. She seemed annoyed about it.“Isn’t this what you wanted, Mom? For

me to be teenagery?”“Well, not necessarily this kinda teen-

agery, but of course your father and I are ex-cited to see you become a young woman,making friends, going on dates.”

“I’m not going on dates,” I said. “I don’twant to go on dates with anyone. It’s a ter-rible idea and a huge waste of time and—”

“Honey,” my mom said. “What’swrong?”

“I’m like. Like. I’m like a grenade, Mom.I’m a grenade and at some point I’m going to

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blow up and I would like to minimize thecasualties, okay?”

My dad tilted his head a little to the side,like a scolded puppy.

“I’m a grenade,” I said again. “I justwant to stay away from people and readbooks and think and be with you guys be-cause there’s nothing I can do about hurtingyou; you’re too invested, so just please let medo that, okay? I’m not depressed. I don’tneed to get out more. And I can’t be a regularteenager, because I’m a grenade.”

“Hazel,” Dad said, and then choked up.He cried a lot, my dad.

“I’m going to go to my room and readfor a while, okay? I’m fine. I really am fine; Ijust want to go read for a while.”

I started out trying to read this novel I’dbeen assigned, but we lived in a tragicallythin-walled home, so I could hear much ofthe whispered conversation that ensued. Mydad saying, “It kills me,” and my mom

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saying, “That’s exactly what she doesn’t needto hear,” and my dad saying, “I’m sorrybut—” and my mom saying, “Are you notgrateful?” And him saying, “God, of courseI’m grateful.” I kept trying to get into thisstory but I couldn’t stop hearing them.

So I turned on my computer to listen tosome music, and with Augustus’s favoriteband, The Hectic Glow, as my sound track, Iwent back to Caroline Mathers’s tributepages, reading about how heroic her fightwas, and how much she was missed, andhow she was in a better place, and how shewould live forever in their memories, andhow everyone who knew her—everyone—waslaid low by her leaving.

Maybe I was supposed to hate CarolineMathers or something because she’d beenwith Augustus, but I didn’t. I couldn’t see hervery clearly amid all the tributes, but theredidn’t seem to be much to hate—she seemedto be mostly a professional sick person, like

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me, which made me worry that when I diedthey’d have nothing to say about me exceptthat I fought heroically, as if the only thingI’d ever done was Have Cancer.

Anyway, eventually I started readingCaroline Mathers’s little notes, which weremostly actually written by her parents, be-cause I guess her brain cancer was of thevariety that makes you not you before itmakes you not alive.

So it was all like, Caroline continues tohave behavioral problems. She’s strugglinga lot with anger and frustration over not be-ing able to speak (we are frustrated aboutthese things, too, of course, but we havemore socially acceptable ways of dealingwith our anger). Gus has taken to callingCaroline HULK SMASH, which resonateswith the doctors. There’s nothing easy aboutthis for any of us, but you take your humorwhere you can get it. Hoping to go home onThursday. We’ll let you know . . .

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She didn’t go home on Thursday, need-less to say.

So of course I tensed up when he touchedme. To be with him was to hurt him—inevit-ably. And that’s what I’d felt as he reachedfor me: I’d felt as though I were committingan act of violence against him, because I was.

I decided to text him. I wanted to avoida whole conversation about it.

Hi, so okay, I don’t know if you’ll under-stand this but I can’t kiss you or any-thing. Not that you’d necessarily wantto, but I can’t.

When I try to look at you like that, all Isee is what I’m going to put youthrough. Maybe that doesn’t make senseto you.

Anyway, sorry.

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He responded a few minutes later.

Okay.

I wrote back.

Okay.

He responded:

Oh, my God, stop flirting with me!

I just said:

Okay.

My phone buzzed moments later.

I was kidding, Hazel Grace. I under-stand. (But we both know that okay is a

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very flirty word. Okay is BURSTINGwith sensuality.)

I was very tempted to respond Okay again,but I pictured him at my funeral, and thathelped me text properly.

Sorry.

* * *

I tried to go to sleep with my headphonesstill on, but then after a while my mom anddad came in, and my mom grabbed Bluiefrom the shelf and hugged him to her stom-ach, and my dad sat down in my desk chair,and without crying he said, “You are not agrenade, not to us. Thinking about you dyingmakes us sad, Hazel, but you are not a gren-ade. You are amazing. You can’t know,sweetie, because you’ve never had a baby be-come a brilliant young reader with a side in-terest in horrible television shows, but the

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joy you bring us is so much greater than thesadness we feel about your illness.”

“Okay,” I said.“Really,” my dad said. “I wouldn’t bull-

shit you about this. If you were more troublethan you’re worth, we’d just toss you out onthe streets.”

“We’re not sentimental people,” Momadded, deadpan. “We’d leave you at anorphanage with a note pinned to yourpajamas.”

I laughed.“You don’t have to go to Support

Group,” Mom added. “You don’t have to doanything. Except go to school.” She handedme the bear.

“I think Bluie can sleep on the shelf to-night,” I said. “Let me remind you that I ammore than thirty-three half years old.”

“Keep him tonight,” she said.“Mom,” I said.“He’s lonely,” she said.

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“Oh, my God, Mom,” I said. But I tookstupid Bluie and kind of cuddled with him asI fell asleep.

I still had one arm draped over Bluie, infact, when I awoke just after four in themorning with an apocalyptic pain fingeringout from the unreachable center of my head.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

I screamed to wake up my parents, andthey burst into the room, but there was noth-ing they could do to dim the supernovae ex-ploding inside my brain, an endless chain ofintracranial firecrackers that made me thinkthat I was once and for all going, and I toldmyself—as I’ve told myself before—that thebody shuts down when the pain gets too bad,that consciousness is temporary, that thiswill pass. But just like always, I didn’t slipaway. I was left on the shore with the waveswashing over me, unable to drown.

Dad drove, talking on the phone withthe hospital, while I lay in the back with myhead in Mom’s lap. There was nothing to do:Screaming made it worse. All stimuli made itworse, actually.

The only solution was to try to unmakethe world, to make it black and silent anduninhabited again, to return to the momentbefore the Big Bang, in the beginning whenthere was the Word, and to live in that vacu-ous uncreated space alone with the Word.

People talk about the courage of cancerpatients, and I do not deny that courage. Ihad been poked and stabbed and poisonedfor years, and still I trod on. But make nomistake: In that moment, I would have beenvery, very happy to die.

I woke up in the ICU. I could tell I was in theICU because I didn’t have my own room, andbecause there was so much beeping, and be-cause I was alone: They don’t let your family

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stay with you 24/7 in the ICU at Children’sbecause it’s an infection risk. There was wail-ing down the hall. Somebody’s kid had died.I was alone. I hit the red call button.

A nurse came in seconds later. “Hi,” Isaid.

“Hello, Hazel. I’m Alison, your nurse,”she said.

“Hi, Alison My Nurse,” I said.Whereupon I started to feel pretty tired

again. But I woke up a bit when my parentscame in, crying and kissing my face re-peatedly, and I reached up for them andtried to squeeze, but my everything hurtwhen I squeezed, and Mom and Dad told methat I did not have a brain tumor, but thatmy headache was caused by poor oxygena-tion, which was caused by my lungs swim-ming in fluid, a liter and a half (!!!!) of whichhad been successfully drained from mychest, which was why I might feel a slightdiscomfort in my side, where there was, hey

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look at that, a tube that went from my chestinto a plastic bladder half full of liquid thatfor all the world resembled my dad’s favoriteamber ale. Mom told me I was going to gohome, that I really was, that I would justhave to get this drained every now and againand get back on the BiPAP, this nighttimemachine that forces air in and out of my craplungs. But I’d had a total body PET scan onthe first night in the hospital, they told me,and the news was good: no tumor growth.No new tumors. My shoulder pain had beenlack-of-oxygen pain. Heart-working-too-hard pain.

“Dr. Maria said this morning that sheremains optimistic,” Dad said. I liked Dr.Maria, and she didn’t bullshit you, so thatfelt good to hear.

“This is just a thing, Hazel,” my momsaid. “It’s a thing we can live with.”

I nodded, and then Alison My Nursekind of politely made them leave. She asked

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me if I wanted some ice chips, and I nodded,and then she sat at the bed with me andspooned them into my mouth.

“So you’ve been gone a couple days,” Al-ison said. “Hmm, what’d you miss . . . Acelebrity did drugs. Politicians disagreed. Adifferent celebrity wore a bikini that revealeda bodily imperfection. A team won a sportingevent, but another team lost.” I smiled. “Youcan’t go disappearing on everybody like this,Hazel. You miss too much.”

“More?” I asked, nodding toward thewhite Styrofoam cup in her hand.

“I shouldn’t,” she said, “but I’m a rebel.”She gave me another plastic spoonful ofcrushed ice. I mumbled a thank-you. PraiseGod for good nurses. “Getting tired?” sheasked. I nodded. “Sleep for a while,” she said.“I’ll try to run interference and give you acouple hours before somebody comes in tocheck vitals and the like.” I said Thanksagain. You say thanks a lot in a hospital. I

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tried to settle into the bed. “You’re not gonnaask about your boyfriend?” she asked.

“Don’t have one,” I told her.“Well, there’s a kid who has hardly left

the waiting room since you got here,” shesaid.

“He hasn’t seen me like this, has he?”“No. Family only.”I nodded and sank into an aqueous

sleep.

It would take me six days to get home, sixundays of staring at acoustic ceiling tile andwatching television and sleeping and painand wishing for time to pass. I did not seeAugustus or anyone other than my parents.My hair looked like a bird’s nest; my shuff-ling gait like a dementia patient’s. I felt alittle better each day, though: Each sleepended to reveal a person who seemed a bitmore like me. Sleep fights cancer, RegularDr. Jim said for the thousandth time as he

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hovered over me one morning surrounded bya coterie of medical students.

“Then I am a cancer-fighting machine,”I told him.

“That you are, Hazel. Keep resting, andhopefully we’ll get you home soon.”

On Tuesday, they told me I’d go home onWednesday. On Wednesday, two minimallysupervised medical students removed mychest tube, which felt like getting stabbed inreverse and generally didn’t go very well, sothey decided I’d have to stay until Thursday.I was beginning to think that I was the sub-ject of some existentialist experiment in per-manently delayed gratification when Dr.Maria showed up on Friday morning, sniffedaround me for a minute, and told me I wasgood to go.

So Mom opened her oversize purse toreveal that she’d had my Go Home Clotheswith her all along. A nurse came in and took

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out my IV. I felt untethered even though Istill had the oxygen tank to carry aroundwith me. I went into the bathroom, took myfirst shower in a week, got dressed, and whenI got out, I was so tired I had to lie down andget my breath. Mom asked, “Do you want tosee Augustus?”

“I guess,” I said after a minute. I stoodup and shuffled over to one of the moldedplastic chairs against the wall, tucking mytank beneath the chair. It wore me out.

Dad came back with Augustus a fewminutes later. His hair was messy, sweepingdown over his forehead. He lit up with a realAugustus Waters Goofy Smile when he sawme, and I couldn’t help but smile back. Hesat down in the blue faux-leather reclinernext to my chair. He leaned in toward me,seemingly incapable of stifling the smile.

Mom and Dad left us alone, which feltawkward. I worked hard to meet his eyes,even though they were the kind of pretty

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that’s hard to look at. “I missed you,” Augus-tus said.

My voice was smaller than I wanted it tobe. “Thanks for not trying to see me when Ilooked like hell.”

“To be fair, you still look pretty bad.”I laughed. “I missed you, too. I just don’t

want you to see . . . all this. I just want,like . . . It doesn’t matter. You don’t alwaysget what you want.”

“Is that so?” he asked. “I’d alwaysthought the world was a wish-grantingfactory.”

“Turns out that is not the case,” I said.He was so beautiful. He reached for my handbut I shook my head. “No,” I said quietly. “Ifwe’re gonna hang out, it has to be, like, notthat.”

“Okay,” he said. “Well, I have good newsand bad news on the wish-granting front.”

“Okay?” I said.

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“The bad news is that we obviously can’tgo to Amsterdam until you’re better. TheGenies will, however, work their famous ma-gic when you’re well enough.”

“That’s the good news?”“No, the good news is that while you

were sleeping, Peter Van Houten shared a bitmore of his brilliant brain with us.”

He reached for my hand again, but thistime to slip into it a heavily folded sheet ofstationery on the letterhead of Peter VanHouten, Novelist Emeritus.

I didn’t read it until I got home, situated inmy own huge and empty bed with no chanceof medical interruption. It took me forever todecode Van Houten’s sloped, scratchy script.

Dear Mr. Waters,

I am in receipt of your electronic maildated the 14th of April and duly

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impressed by the Shakespearean com-plexity of your tragedy. Everyone in thistale has a rock-solid hamartia: hers,that she is so sick; yours, that you are sowell. Were she better or you sicker, thenthe stars would not be so terriblycrossed, but it is the nature of stars tocross, and never was Shakespeare morewrong than when he had Cassius note,“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in ourstars / But in ourselves.” Easy enough tosay when you’re a Roman nobleman (orShakespeare!), but there is no shortageof fault to be found amid our stars.

While we’re on the topic of oldWill’s insufficiencies, your writing aboutyoung Hazel reminds me of the Bard’sFifty-fifth sonnet, which of course be-gins, “Not marble, nor the gilded monu-ments / Of princes, shall outlive thispowerful rhyme; / But you shall shinemore bright in these contents / Than

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unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttishtime.” (Off topic, but: What a slut timeis. She screws everybody.) It’s a finepoem but a deceitful one: We do indeedremember Shakespeare’s powerfulrhyme, but what do we remember aboutthe person it commemorates? Nothing.We’re pretty sure he was male;everything else is guesswork.Shakespeare told us precious little of theman whom he entombed in his linguisticsarcophagus. (Witness also that whenwe talk about literature, we do so in thepresent tense. When we speak of thedead, we are not so kind.) You do notimmortalize the lost by writing aboutthem. Language buries, but does not re-surrect. (Full disclosure: I am not thefirst to make this observation. cf, theMacLeish poem “Not Marble, Nor theGilded Monuments,” which contains the

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heroic line “I shall say you will die andnone will remember you.”)

I digress, but here’s the rub: Thedead are visible only in the terrible lid-less eye of memory. The living, thankheaven, retain the ability to surprise andto disappoint. Your Hazel is alive,Waters, and you mustn’t impose yourwill upon another’s decision, particu-larly a decision arrived at thoughtfully.She wishes to spare you pain, and youshould let her. You may not find youngHazel’s logic persuasive, but I have trodthrough this vale of tears longer thanyou, and from where I’m sitting, she’snot the lunatic.

Yours truly,Peter Van Houten

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It was really written by him. I licked my fin-ger and dabbed the paper and the ink bled alittle, so I knew it was really real.

“Mom,” I said. I did not say it loudly, butI didn’t have to. She was always waiting. Shepeeked her head around the door.

“You okay, sweetie?”“Can we call Dr. Maria and ask if inter-

national travel would kill me?”

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CHAPTER EIGHT

We had a big Cancer Team Meeting acouple days later. Every so often, a bunch ofdoctors and social workers and physical ther-apists and whoever else got together arounda big table in a conference room and dis-cussed my situation. (Not the AugustusWaters situation or the Amsterdam situ-ation. The cancer situation.)

Dr. Maria led the meeting. She huggedme when I got there. She was a hugger.

I felt a little better, I guess. Sleepingwith the BiPAP all night made my lungs feel

almost normal, although, then again, I didnot really remember lung normality.

Everyone got there and made a big showof turning off their pagers and everything soit would be all about me, and then Dr. Mariasaid, “So the great news is that Phalanxiforcontinues to control your tumor growth, butobviously we’re still seeing serious problemswith fluid accumulation. So the question is,how should we proceed?”

And then she just looked at me, like shewas waiting for an answer. “Um,” I said, “Ifeel like I am not the most qualified personin the room to answer that question?”

She smiled. “Right, I was waiting for Dr.Simons. Dr. Simons?” He was another cancerdoctor of some kind.

“Well, we know from other patients thatmost tumors eventually evolve a way to growin spite of Phalanxifor, but if that were thecase, we’d see tumor growth on the scans,which we don’t see. So it’s not that yet.”

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Yet, I thought.Dr. Simons tapped at the table with his

forefinger. “The thought around here is thatit’s possible the Phalanxifor is worsening theedema, but we’d face far more serious prob-lems if we discontinued its use.”

Dr. Maria added, “We don’t really un-derstand the long-term effects of Phalanxi-for. Very few people have been on it as longas you have.”

“So we’re gonna do nothing?”“We’re going to stay the course,” Dr.

Maria said, “but we’ll need to do more tokeep that edema from building up.” I feltkind of sick for some reason, like I was goingto throw up. I hated Cancer Team Meetingsin general, but I hated this one in particular.“Your cancer is not going away, Hazel. Butwe’ve seen people live with your level of tu-mor penetration for a long time.” (I did notask what constituted a long time. I’d madethat mistake before.) “I know that coming

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out of the ICU, it doesn’t feel this way, butthis fluid is, at least for the time being,manageable.”

“Can’t I just get like a lung transplant orsomething?” I asked.

Dr. Maria’s lips shrank into her mouth.“You would not be considered a strong can-didate for a transplant, unfortunately,” shesaid. I understood: No use wasting goodlungs on a hopeless case. I nodded, tryingnot to look like that comment hurt me. Mydad started crying a little. I didn’t look overat him, but no one said anything for a longtime, so his hiccuping cry was the only soundin the room.

I hated hurting him. Most of the time, Icould forget about it, but the inexorabletruth is this: They might be glad to have mearound, but I was the alpha and the omega ofmy parents’ suffering.

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Just before the Miracle, when I was in theICU and it looked like I was going to die andMom was telling me it was okay to let go,and I was trying to let go but my lungs keptsearching for air, Mom sobbed something in-to Dad’s chest that I wish I hadn’t heard, andthat I hope she never finds out that I didhear. She said, “I won’t be a mom anymore.”It gutted me pretty badly.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that dur-ing the whole Cancer Team Meeting. Icouldn’t get it out of my head, how she soun-ded when she said that, like she would neverbe okay again, which probably she wouldn’t.

Anyway, eventually we decided to keepthings the same only with more frequent flu-id drainings. At the end, I asked if I couldtravel to Amsterdam, and Dr. Simons actu-ally and literally laughed, but then Dr. Mariasaid, “Why not?” And Simons said, dubi-ously, “Why not?” And Dr. Maria said, “Yeah,

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I don’t see why not. They’ve got oxygen onthe planes, after all.” Dr. Simons said, “Arethey just going to gate-check a BiPAP?” AndMaria said, “Yeah, or have one waiting forher.”

“Placing a patient—one of the mostpromising Phalanxifor survivors, no less—aneight-hour flight from the only physicians in-timately familiar with her case? That’s a re-cipe for disaster.”

Dr. Maria shrugged. “It would increasesome risks,” she acknowledged, but thenturned to me and said, “But it’s your life.”

Except not really. On the car ride home, myparents agreed: I would not be going to Ams-terdam unless and until there was medicalagreement that it would be safe.

* * *

Augustus called that night after dinner. I wasalready in bed—after dinner had become my

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bedtime for the moment—propped up with agajillion pillows and also Bluie, with mycomputer on my lap.

I picked up, saying, “Bad news,” and hesaid, “Shit, what?”

“I can’t go to Amsterdam. One of mydoctors thinks it’s a bad idea.”

He was quiet for a second. “God,” hesaid. “I should’ve just paid for it myself.Should’ve just taken you straight from theFunky Bones to Amsterdam.”

“But then I would’ve had a probablyfatal episode of deoxygenation in Amster-dam, and my body would have been shippedhome in the cargo hold of an airplane,” Isaid.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “But before that,my grand romantic gesture would havetotally gotten me laid.”

I laughed pretty hard, hard enough thatI felt where the chest tube had been.

“You laugh because it’s true,” he said.

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I laughed again.“It’s true, isn’t it!”“Probably not,” I said, and then after a

moment added, “although you never know.”He moaned in misery. “I’m gonna die a

virgin,” he said.“You’re a virgin?” I asked, surprised.“Hazel Grace,” he said, “do you have a

pen and a piece of paper?” I said I did.“Okay, please draw a circle.” I did. “Nowdraw a smaller circle within that circle.” Idid. “The larger circle is virgins. The smallercircle is seventeen-year-old guys with oneleg.”

I laughed again, and told him that hav-ing most of your social engagements occur ata children’s hospital also did not encouragepromiscuity, and then we talked about PeterVan Houten’s amazingly brilliant commentabout the sluttiness of time, and even thoughI was in bed and he was in his basement, itreally felt like we were back in that uncreated

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third space, which was a place I really likedvisiting with him.

Then I got off the phone and my momand dad came into my room, and eventhough it was really not big enough for allthree of us, they lay on either side of the bedwith me and we all watched ANTM on thelittle TV in my room. This girl I didn’t like,Selena, got kicked off, which made me reallyhappy for some reason. Then Mom hookedme up to the BiPAP and tucked me in, andDad kissed me on the forehead, the kiss allstubble, and then I closed my eyes.

The BiPAP essentially took control ofmy breathing away from me, which was in-tensely annoying, but the great thing about itwas that it made all this noise, rumbling witheach inhalation and whirring as I exhaled. Ikept thinking that it sounded like a dragonbreathing in time with me, like I had this petdragon who was cuddled up next to me andcared enough about me to time his breaths to

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mine. I was thinking about that as I sank intosleep.

I got up late the next morning. I watched TVin bed and checked my email and then aftera while started crafting an email to Peter VanHouten about how I couldn’t come to Ams-terdam but I swore upon the life of my moth-er that I would never share any informationabout the characters with anyone, that Ididn’t even want to share it, because I was aterribly selfish person, and could he pleasejust tell me if the Dutch Tulip Man is for realand if Anna’s mom marries him and alsoabout Sisyphus the Hamster.

But I didn’t send it. It was too patheticeven for me.

Around three, when I figured Augustuswould be home from school, I went into thebackyard and called him. As the phone rang,I sat down on the grass, which was all over-grown and dandeliony. That swing set was

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still back there, weeds growing out of thelittle ditch I’d created from kicking myselfhigher as a little kid. I remembered Dadbringing home the kit from Toys “R” Us andbuilding it in the backyard with a neighbor.He’d insisted on swinging on it first to test it,and the thing damn near broke.

The sky was gray and low and full of rainbut not yet raining. I hung up when I gotAugustus’s voice mail and then put thephone down in the dirt beside me and keptlooking at the swing set, thinking that Iwould give up all the sick days I had left for afew healthy ones. I tried to tell myself that itcould be worse, that the world was not awish-granting factory, that I was living withcancer not dying of it, that I mustn’t let it killme before it kills me, and then I just startedmuttering stupid stupid stupid stupid stupidstupid over and over again until the soundunhinged from its meaning. I was still sayingit when he called back.

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“Hi,” I said.“Hazel Grace,” he said.“Hi,” I said again.“Are you crying, Hazel Grace?”“Kind of?”“Why?” he asked.“’Cause I’m just—I want to go to Amster-

dam, and I want him to tell me what happensafter the book is over, and I just don’t wantmy particular life, and also the sky is de-pressing me, and there is this old swing setout here that my dad made for me when Iwas a kid.”

“I must see this old swing set of tearsimmediately,” he said. “I’ll be over in twentyminutes.”

I stayed in the backyard because Mom wasalways really smothery and concerned whenI was crying, because I did not cry often, andI knew she’d want to talk and discuss wheth-er I shouldn’t consider adjusting my

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medication, and the thought of that wholeconversation made me want to throw up.

It’s not like I had some utterly poignant,well-lit memory of a healthy father pushing ahealthy child and the child saying higherhigher higher or some other metaphoricallyresonant moment. The swing set was just sit-ting there, abandoned, the two little swingshanging still and sad from a grayed plank ofwood, the outline of the seats like a kid’sdrawing of a smile.

Behind me, I heard the sliding-glassdoor open. I turned around. It was Augustus,wearing khaki pants and a short-sleeve plaidbutton-down. I wiped my face with my sleeveand smiled. “Hi,” I said.

It took him a second to sit down on theground next to me, and he grimaced as helanded rather ungracefully on his ass. “Hi,”he said finally. I looked over at him. He waslooking past me, into the backyard. “I seeyour point,” he said as he put an arm around

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my shoulder. “That is one sad goddamnedswing set.”

I nudged my head into his shoulder.“Thanks for offering to come over.”

“You realize that trying to keep your dis-tance from me will not lessen my affectionfor you,” he said.

“I guess?” I said.“All efforts to save me from you will

fail,” he said.“Why? Why would you even like me?

Haven’t you put yourself through enough ofthis?” I asked, thinking of Caroline Mathers.

Gus didn’t answer. He just held on tome, his fingers strong against my left arm.“We gotta do something about this friggingswing set,” he said. “I’m telling you, it’sninety percent of the problem.”

Once I’d recovered, we went inside and satdown on the couch right next to each other,

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the laptop half on his (fake) knee and half onmine. “Hot,” I said of the laptop’s base.

“Is it now?” He smiled. Gus loaded thisgiveaway site called Free No Catch and to-gether we wrote an ad.

“Headline?” he asked.“‘Swing Set Needs Home,’” I said.“‘Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs

Loving Home,’” he said.“‘Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set

Seeks the Butts of Children,’” I said.He laughed. “That’s why.”“What?”“That’s why I like you. Do you realize

how rare it is to come across a hot girl whocreates an adjectival version of the word pe-dophile? You are so busy being you that youhave no idea how utterly unprecedented youare.”

I took a deep breath through my nose.There was never enough air in the world, but

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the shortage was particularly acute in thatmoment.

We wrote the ad together, editing eachother as we went. In the end, we settled uponthis:

Desperately Lonely Swing SetNeeds Loving Home

One swing set, well worn but structur-ally sound, seeks new home. Makememories with your kid or kids so thatsomeday he or she or they will look intothe backyard and feel the ache of senti-mentality as desperately as I did this af-ternoon. It’s all fragile and fleeting, dearreader, but with this swing set, yourchild(ren) will be introduced to the upsand downs of human life gently andsafely, and may also learn the most im-portant lesson of all: No matter how

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hard you kick, no matter how high youget, you can’t go all the way around.

Swing set currently resides near 83rdand Spring Mill.

After that, we turned on the TV for a littlewhile, but we couldn’t find anything towatch, so I grabbed An Imperial Afflictionoff the bedside table and brought it back intothe living room and Augustus Waters read tome while Mom, making lunch, listened in.

“‘Mother’s glass eye turned inward,’”Augustus began. As he read, I fell in love theway you fall asleep: slowly, and then all atonce.

When I checked my email an hour later, Ilearned that we had plenty of swing-set suit-ors to choose from. In the end, we picked aguy named Daniel Alvarez who’d included apicture of his three kids playing video games

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with the subject line I just want them to gooutside. I emailed him back and told him topick it up at his leisure.

Augustus asked if I wanted to go withhim to Support Group, but I was really tiredfrom my busy day of Having Cancer, so Ipassed. We were sitting there on the couchtogether, and he pushed himself up to go butthen fell back down onto the couch andsneaked a kiss onto my cheek.

“Augustus!” I said.“Friendly,” he said. He pushed himself

up again and really stood this time, then tooktwo steps over to my mom and said, “Alwaysa pleasure to see you,” and my mom openedher arms to hug him, whereupon Augustusleaned in and kissed my mom on the cheek.He turned back to me. “See?” he asked.

I went to bed right after dinner, theBiPAP drowning out the world beyond myroom.

I never saw the swing set again.

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* * *

I slept for a long time, ten hours, possibly be-cause of the slow recovery and possibly be-cause sleep fights cancer and possibly be-cause I was a teenager with no particularwake-up time. I wasn’t strong enough yet togo back to classes at MCC. When I finally feltlike getting up, I removed the BiPAP snoutfrom my nose, put my oxygen nubbins in,turned them on, and then grabbed my laptopfrom beneath my bed, where I’d stashed itthe night before.

I had an email from LidewijVliegenthart.

Dear Hazel,

I have received word via the Genies thatyou will be visiting us with AugustusWaters and your mother beginning on4th of May. Only a week away! Peter andI are delighted and cannot wait to make

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your acquaintance. Your hotel, the Filo-soof, is just one street away from Peter’shome. Perhaps we should give you oneday for the jet lag, yes? So if convenient,we will meet you at Peter’s home on themorning of 5th May at perhaps teno’clock for a cup of coffee and for him toanswer questions you have about hisbook. And then perhaps afterward wecan tour a museum or the Anne FrankHouse?

With all best wishes,Lidewij VliegenthartExecutive Assistant to Mr. Peter VanHouten, author of An Imperial Affliction

* * *

“Mom,” I said. She didn’t answer. “MOM!” Ishouted. Nothing. Again, louder, “MOM!”

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She ran in wearing a threadbare pinktowel under her armpits, dripping, vaguelypanicked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Sorry, I didn’t know you werein the shower,” I said.

“Bath,” she said. “I was just . . .” Sheclosed her eyes. “Just trying to take a bathfor five seconds. Sorry. What’s going on?”

“Can you call the Genies and tell themthe trip is off? I just got an email from PeterVan Houten’s assistant. She thinks we’recoming.”

She pursed her lips and squinted pastme.

“What?” I asked.“I’m not supposed to tell you until your

father gets home.”“What?” I asked again.“Trip’s on,” she said finally. “Dr. Maria

called us last night and made a convincingcase that you need to live your—”

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“MOM, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!” Ishouted, and she came to the bed and let mehug her.

I texted Augustus because I knew he wasin school:

Still free May three? :-)

He texted back immediately.

Everything’s coming up Waters.

If I could just stay alive for a week, I’d knowthe unwritten secrets of Anna’s mom and theDutch Tulip Guy. I looked down my blouse atmy chest.

“Keep your shit together,” I whisperedto my lungs.

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CHAPTER NINE

The day before we left for Amsterdam, Iwent back to Support Group for the first timesince meeting Augustus. The cast had rotateda bit down there in the Literal Heart of Je-sus. I arrived early, enough time for perenni-ally strong appendiceal cancer survivor Lidato bring me up-to-date on everyone as I ate agrocery-store chocolate chip cookie whileleaning against the dessert table.

Twelve-year-old leukemic Michael hadpassed away. He’d fought hard, Lida told me,as if there were another way to fight.

Everyone else was still around. Ken was NECafter radiation. Lucas had relapsed, and shesaid it with a sad smile and a little shrug, theway you might say an alcoholic had relapsed.

A cute, chubby girl walked over to thetable and said hi to Lida, then introducedherself to me as Susan. I didn’t know whatwas wrong with her, but she had a scar ex-tending from the side of her nose down herlip and across her cheek. She had putmakeup over the scar, which only served toemphasize it. I was feeling a little out ofbreath from all the standing, so I said, “I’mgonna go sit,” and then the elevator opened,revealing Isaac and his mom. He woresunglasses and clung to his mom’s arm withone hand, a cane in the other.

“Support Group Hazel not Monica,” Isaid when he got close enough, and hesmiled and said, “Hey, Hazel. How’s itgoing?”

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“Good. I’ve gotten really hot since youwent blind.”

“I bet,” he said. His mom led him to achair, kissed the top of his head, and shuffledback toward the elevator. He felt around be-neath him and then sat. I sat down in thechair next to him. “So how’s it going?”

“Okay. Glad to be home, I guess. Gustold me you were in the ICU?”

“Yeah,” I said.“Sucks,” he said.“I’m a lot better now,” I said. “I’m going

to Amsterdam tomorrow with Gus.”“I know. I’m pretty well up-to-date on

your life, because Gus never. Talks. About.Anything. Else.”

I smiled. Patrick cleared his throat andsaid, “If we could all take a seat?” He caughtmy eye. “Hazel!” he said. “I’m so glad to seeyou!”

Everyone sat and Patrick began his re-telling of his ball-lessness, and I fell into the

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routine of Support Group: communicatingthrough sighs with Isaac, feeling sorry foreveryone in the room and also everyone out-side of it, zoning out of the conversation tofocus on my breathlessness and the aching.The world went on, as it does, without myfull participation, and I only woke up fromthe reverie when someone said my name.

It was Lida the Strong. Lida in remis-sion. Blond, healthy, stout Lida, who swamon her high school swim team. Lida, missingonly her appendix, saying my name, saying,“Hazel is such an inspiration to me; shereally is. She just keeps fighting the battle,waking up every morning and going to warwithout complaint. She’s so strong. She’s somuch stronger than I am. I just wish I hadher strength.”

“Hazel?” Patrick asked. “How does thatmake you feel?”

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I shrugged and looked over at Lida. “I’llgive you my strength if I can have your re-mission.” I felt guilty as soon as I said it.

“I don’t think that’s what Lida meant,”Patrick said. “I think she . . .” But I’d stoppedlistening.

After the prayers for the living and theendless litany of the dead (with Michaeltacked on to the end), we held hands andsaid, “Living our best life today!”

Lida immediately rushed up to me fullof apology and explanation, and I said, “No,no, it’s really fine,” waving her off, and I saidto Isaac, “Care to accompany me upstairs?”

He took my arm, and I walked with himto the elevator, grateful to have an excuse toavoid the stairs. I’d almost made it all theway to the elevator when I saw his momstanding in a corner of the Literal Heart.“I’m here,” she said to Isaac, and he switchedfrom my arm to hers before asking, “Youwant to come over?”

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“Sure,” I said. I felt bad for him. Eventhough I hated the sympathy people felt to-ward me, I couldn’t help but feel it towardhim.

Isaac lived in a small ranch house in Meridi-an Hills next to this fancy private school. Wesat down in the living room while his momwent off to the kitchen to make dinner, andthen he asked if I wanted to play a game.

“Sure,” I said. So he asked for the re-mote. I gave it to him, and he turned on theTV and then a computer attached to it. TheTV screen stayed black, but after a fewseconds a deep voice spoke from it.

“Deception,” the voice said. “One playeror two?”

“Two,” Isaac said. “Pause.” He turned tome. “I play this game with Gus all the time,but it’s infuriating because he is a completelysuicidal video-game player. He’s, like, way

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too aggressive about saving civilians andwhatnot.”

“Yeah,” I said, remembering the night ofthe broken trophies.

“Unpause,” Isaac said.“Player one, identify yourself.”“This is player one’s sexy sexy voice,”

Isaac said.“Player two, identify yourself.”“I would be player two, I guess,” I said.Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem and Priv-

ate Jasper Jacks awake in a dark, emptyroom approximately twelve feet square.

Isaac pointed toward the TV, like Ishould talk to it or something. “Um,” I said.“Is there a light switch?”

No.“Is there a door?”Private Jacks locates the door. It is

locked.Isaac jumped in. “There’s a key above

the door frame.”

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Yes, there is.“Mayhem opens the door.”The darkness is still complete.“Take out knife,” Isaac said.“Take out knife,” I added.A kid—Isaac’s brother, I assume—darted

out from the kitchen. He was maybe ten,wiry and overenergetic, and he kind ofskipped across the living room before shout-ing in a really good imitation of Isaac’s voice,“KILL MYSELF.”

Sergeant Mayhem places his knife to hisneck. Are you sure you—

“No,” Isaac said. “Pause. Graham, don’tmake me kick your ass.” Graham laughedgiddily and skipped off down a hallway.

As Mayhem and Jacks, Isaac and I feltour way forward in the cavern until webumped into a guy whom we stabbed aftergetting him to tell us that we were in aUkrainian prison cave, more than a mile be-neath the ground. As we continued, sound

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effects—a raging underground river, voicesspeaking in Ukrainian and accented Eng-lish—led you through the cave, but there wasnothing to see in this game. After playing foran hour, we began to hear the cries of a des-perate prisoner, pleading, “God, help me.God, help me.”

“Pause,” Isaac said. “This is when Gusalways insists on finding the prisoner, eventhough that keeps you from winning thegame, and the only way to actually free theprisoner is to win the game.”

“Yeah, he takes video games too seri-ously,” I said. “He’s a bit too enamored withmetaphor.”

“Do you like him?” Isaac asked.“Of course I like him. He’s great.”“But you don’t want to hook up with

him?”I shrugged. “It’s complicated.”“I know what you’re trying to do. You

don’t want to give him something he can’t

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handle. You don’t want him to Monica you,”he said.

“Kinda,” I said. But it wasn’t that. Thetruth was, I didn’t want to Isaac him. “To befair to Monica,” I said, “what you did to herwasn’t very nice either.”

“What’d I do to her?” he asked,defensive.

“You know, going blind and everything.”“But that’s not my fault,” Isaac said.“I’m not saying it was your fault. I’m

saying it wasn’t nice.”

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CHAPTER TEN

We could only take one suitcase. Icouldn’t carry one, and Mom insisted thatshe couldn’t carry two, so we had to jockeyfor space in this black suitcase my parentshad gotten as a wedding present a millionyears ago, a suitcase that was supposed tospend its life in exotic locales but ended upmostly going back and forth to Dayton,where Morris Property, Inc., had a satelliteoffice that Dad often visited.

I argued with Mom that I should haveslightly more than half of the suitcase, since

without me and my cancer, we’d never be go-ing to Amsterdam in the first place. Momcountered that since she was twice as largeas me and therefore required more physicalfabric to preserve her modesty, she deservedat least two-thirds of the suitcase.

In the end, we both lost. So it goes.Our flight didn’t leave until noon, but

Mom woke me up at five thirty, turning onthe light and shouting, “AMSTERDAM!” Sheran around all morning making sure we hadinternational plug adapters and quadruple-checking that we had the right number ofoxygen tanks to get there and that they wereall full, etc., while I just rolled out of bed, puton my Travel to Amsterdam Outfit (jeans, apink tank top, and a black cardigan in casethe plane was cold).

The car was packed by six fifteen,whereupon Mom insisted that we eat break-fast with Dad, although I had a moral oppos-ition to eating before dawn on the grounds

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that I was not a nineteenth-century Russianpeasant fortifying myself for a day in thefields. But anyway, I tried to stomach downsome eggs while Mom and Dad enjoyedthese homemade versions of Egg McMuffinsthey liked.

“Why are breakfast foods breakfastfoods?” I asked them. “Like, why don’t wehave curry for breakfast?”

“Hazel, eat.”“But why?” I asked. “I mean, seriously:

How did scrambled eggs get stuck withbreakfast exclusivity? You can put bacon ona sandwich without anyone freaking out. Butthe moment your sandwich has an egg,boom, it’s a breakfast sandwich.”

Dad answered with his mouth full.“When you come back, we’ll have breakfastfor dinner. Deal?”

“I don’t want to have ‘breakfast for din-ner,’” I answered, crossing knife and forkover my mostly full plate. “I want to have

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scrambled eggs for dinner without this ri-diculous construction that a scrambledegg–inclusive meal is breakfast even when itoccurs at dinnertime.”

“You’ve gotta pick your battles in thisworld, Hazel,” my mom said. “But if this isthe issue you want to champion, we willstand behind you.”

“Quite a bit behind you,” my dad added,and Mom laughed.

Anyway, I knew it was stupid, but I feltkind of bad for scrambled eggs.

After they finished eating, Dad did thedishes and walked us to the car. Of course,he started crying, and he kissed my cheekwith his wet stubbly face. He pressed hisnose against my cheekbone and whispered,“I love you. I’m so proud of you.” (For what,I wondered.)

“Thanks, Dad.”“I’ll see you in a few days, okay, sweetie?

I love you so much.”

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“I love you, too, Dad.” I smiled. “And it’sonly three days.”

As we backed out of the driveway, I keptwaving at him. He was waving back, and cry-ing. It occurred to me that he was probablythinking he might never see me again, whichhe probably thought every single morning ofhis entire weekday life as he left for work,which probably sucked.

Mom and I drove over to Augustus’shouse, and when we got there, she wantedme to stay in the car to rest, but I went to thedoor with her anyway. As we approached thehouse, I could hear someone crying inside. Ididn’t think it was Gus at first, because itdidn’t sound anything like the low rumble ofhis speaking, but then I heard a voice thatwas definitely a twisted version of his say,“BECAUSE IT IS MY LIFE, MOM. ITBELONGS TO ME.” And quickly my momput her arm around my shoulders and spun

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me back toward the car, walking quickly, andI was like, “Mom, what’s wrong?”

And she said, “We can’t eavesdrop,Hazel.”

We got back into the car and I textedAugustus that we were outside whenever hewas ready.

We stared at the house for a while. Theweird thing about houses is that they almostalways look like nothing is happening insideof them, even though they contain most ofour lives. I wondered if that was sort of thepoint of architecture.

“Well,” Mom said after a while, “we arepretty early, I guess.”

“Almost as if I didn’t have to get up atfive thirty,” I said. Mom reached down to theconsole between us, grabbed her coffee mug,and took a sip. My phone buzzed. A text fromAugustus.

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Just CAN’T decide what to wear. Do youlike me better in a polo or a button-down?

I replied:

Button-down.

Thirty seconds later, the front door opened,and a smiling Augustus appeared, a rollerbag behind him. He wore a pressed sky-bluebutton-down tucked into his jeans. A CamelLight dangled from his lips. My mom got outto say hi to him. He took the cigarette outmomentarily and spoke in the confidentvoice to which I was accustomed. “Always apleasure to see you, ma’am.”

I watched them through the rearviewmirror until Mom opened the trunk. Mo-ments later, Augustus opened a door behindme and engaged in the complicated businessof entering the backseat of a car with one leg.

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“Do you want shotgun?” I asked.“Absolutely not,” he said. “And hello,

Hazel Grace.”“Hi,” I said. “Okay?” I asked.“Okay,” he said.“Okay,” I said.My mom got in and closed the car door.

“Next stop, Amsterdam,” she announced.

Which was not quite true. The next stop wasthe airport parking lot, and then a bus tookus to the terminal, and then an open-air elec-tric car took us to the security line. The TSAguy at the front of the line was shoutingabout how our bags had better not containexplosives or firearms or anything liquidover three ounces, and I said to Augustus,“Observation: Standing in line is a form ofoppression,” and he said, “Seriously.”

Rather than be searched by hand, Ichose to walk through the metal detectorwithout my cart or my tank or even the

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plastic nubbins in my nose. Walking throughthe X-ray machine marked the first time I’dtaken a step without oxygen in some months,and it felt pretty amazing to walk unen-cumbered like that, stepping across the Ru-bicon, the machine’s silence acknowledgingthat I was, however briefly, a nonmetalli-cized creature.

I felt a bodily sovereignty that I can’treally describe except to say that when I wasa kid I used to have a really heavy backpackthat I carried everywhere with all my booksin it, and if I walked around with the back-pack for long enough, when I took it off I feltlike I was floating.

After about ten seconds, my lungs feltlike they were folding in upon themselveslike flowers at dusk. I sat down on a graybench just past the machine and tried tocatch my breath, my cough a rattling drizzle,and I felt pretty miserable until I got the can-nula back into place.

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Even then, it hurt. The pain was alwaysthere, pulling me inside of myself, demand-ing to be felt. It always felt like I was wakingup from the pain when something in theworld outside of me suddenly required mycomment or attention. Mom was looking atme, concerned. She’d just said something.What had she just said? Then I remembered.She’d asked what was wrong.

“Nothing,” I said.“Amsterdam!” she half shouted.I smiled. “Amsterdam,” I answered. She

reached her hand down to me and pulled meup.

We got to the gate an hour before our sched-uled boarding time. “Mrs. Lancaster, you arean impressively punctual person,” Augustussaid as he sat down next to me in the mostlyempty gate area.

“Well, it helps that I am not technicallyvery busy,” she said.

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“You’re plenty busy,” I told her, al-though it occurred to me that Mom’s busi-ness was mostly me. There was also the busi-ness of being married to my dad—he waskind of clueless about, like, banking and hir-ing plumbers and cooking and doing thingsother than working for Morris Property,Inc.—but it was mostly me. Her primaryreason for living and my primary reason forliving were awfully entangled.

As the seats around the gate started tofill, Augustus said, “I’m gonna get a ham-burger before we leave. Can I get youanything?”

“No,” I said, “but I really appreciate yourrefusal to give in to breakfasty socialconventions.”

He tilted his head at me, confused.“Hazel has developed an issue with the ghet-toization of scrambled eggs,” Mom said.

“It’s embarrassing that we all just walkthrough life blindly accepting that scrambled

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eggs are fundamentally associated withmornings.”

“I want to talk about this more,” Augus-tus said. “But I am starving. I’ll be rightback.”

When Augustus hadn’t showed up aftertwenty minutes, I asked Mom if she thoughtsomething was wrong, and she looked upfrom her awful magazine only long enough tosay, “He probably just went to the bathroomor something.”

A gate agent came over and switched myoxygen container out with one provided bythe airline. I was embarrassed to have thislady kneeling in front of me while everyonewatched, so I texted Augustus while she didit.

He didn’t reply. Mom seemed uncon-cerned, but I was imagining all kinds of Ams-terdam trip–ruining fates (arrest, injury,mental breakdown) and I felt like there was

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something noncancery wrong with my chestas the minutes ticked away.

And just when the lady behind the ticketcounter announced they were going to startpreboarding people who might need a bit ofextra time and every single person in thegate area turned squarely to me, I sawAugustus fast-limping toward us with aMcDonald’s bag in one hand, his backpackslung over his shoulder.

“Where were you?” I asked.“Line got superlong, sorry,” he said, of-

fering me a hand up. I took it, and we walkedside by side to the gate to preboard.

I could feel everybody watching us, won-dering what was wrong with us, and whetherit would kill us, and how heroic my mommust be, and everything else. That was theworst part about having cancer, sometimes:The physical evidence of disease separatesyou from other people. We were irreconcil-ably other, and never was it more obvious

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than when the three of us walked throughthe empty plane, the stewardess noddingsympathetically and gesturing us toward ourrow in the distant back. I sat in the middle ofour three-person row with Augustus in thewindow seat and Mom in the aisle. I felt alittle hemmed in by Mom, so of course Iscooted over toward Augustus. We were rightbehind the plane’s wing. He opened up hisbag and unwrapped his burger.

“The thing about eggs, though,” he said,“is that breakfastization gives the scrambledegg a certain sacrality, right? You can getyourself some bacon or Cheddar cheese any-where anytime, from tacos to breakfast sand-wiches to grilled cheese, but scrambledeggs—they’re important.”

“Ludicrous,” I said. The people werestarting to file into the plane now. I didn’twant to look at them, so I looked away, andto look away was to look at Augustus.

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“I’m just saying: Maybe scrambled eggsare ghettoized, but they’re also special. Theyhave a place and a time, like church does.”

“You couldn’t be more wrong,” I said.“You are buying into the cross-stitched senti-ments of your parents’ throw pillows. You’rearguing that the fragile, rare thing is beauti-ful simply because it is fragile and rare. Butthat’s a lie, and you know it.”

“You’re a hard person to comfort,”Augustus said.

“Easy comfort isn’t comforting,” I said.“You were a rare and fragile flower once. Youremember.”

For a moment, he said nothing. “You doknow how to shut me up, Hazel Grace.”

“It’s my privilege and my responsibility,”I answered.

Before I broke eye contact with him, hesaid, “Listen, sorry I avoided the gate area.The McDonald’s line wasn’t really that long;

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I just . . . I just didn’t want to sit there withall those people looking at us or whatever.”

“At me, mostly,” I said. You could glanceat Gus and never know he’d been sick, but Icarried my disease with me on the outside,which is part of why I’d become a homebodyin the first place. “Augustus Waters, notedcharismatist, is embarrassed to sit next to agirl with an oxygen tank.”

“Not embarrassed,” he said. “They justpiss me off sometimes. And I don’t want tobe pissed off today.” After a minute, he duginto his pocket and flipped open his pack ofsmokes.

About nine seconds later, a blond stew-ardess rushed over to our row and said, “Sir,you can’t smoke on this plane. Or any plane.”

“I don’t smoke,” he explained, the cigar-ette dancing in his mouth as he spoke.

“But—”

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“It’s a metaphor,” I explained. “He putsthe killing thing in his mouth but doesn’tgive it the power to kill him.”

The stewardess was flummoxed for onlya moment. “Well, that metaphor is prohib-ited on today’s flight,” she said. Gus noddedand rejoined the cigarette to its pack.

We finally taxied out to the runway and thepilot said, Flight attendants, prepare for de-parture, and then two tremendous jet en-gines roared to life and we began to acceler-ate. “This is what it feels like to drive in a carwith you,” I said, and he smiled, but kept hisjaw clenched tight and I said, “Okay?”

We were picking up speed and suddenlyGus’s hand grabbed the armrest, his eyeswide, and I put my hand on top of his andsaid, “Okay?” He didn’t say anything, juststared at me wide-eyed, and I said, “Are youscared of flying?”

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“I’ll tell you in a minute,” he said. Thenose of the plane rose up and we were aloft.Gus stared out the window, watching theplanet shrink beneath us, and then I felt hishand relax beneath mine. He glanced at meand then back out the window. “We are fly-ing,” he announced.

“You’ve never been on a plane before?”He shook his head. “LOOK!” he half

shouted, pointing at the window.“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I see it. It looks

like we’re in an airplane.”“NOTHING HAS EVER LOOKED LIKE

THAT EVER IN ALL OF HUMANHISTORY,” he said. His enthusiasm was ad-orable. I couldn’t resist leaning over to kisshim on the cheek.

“Just so you know, I’m right here,” Momsaid. “Sitting next to you. Your mother. Whoheld your hand as you took your first infant-ile steps.”

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“It’s friendly,” I reminded her, turningto kiss her on the cheek.

“Didn’t feel too friendly,” Gus mumbledjust loud enough for me to hear. When sur-prised and excited and innocent Gusemerged from Grand Gesture MetaphoricallyInclined Augustus, I literally could not resist.

It was a quick flight to Detroit, where thelittle electric car met us as we disembarkedand drove us to the gate for Amsterdam.That plane had TVs in the back of each seat,and once we were above the clouds, Augus-tus and I timed it so that we started watchingthe same romantic comedy at the same timeon our respective screens. But even thoughwe were perfectly synchronized in our press-ing of the play button, his movie started acouple seconds before mine, so at everyfunny moment, he’d laugh just as I started tohear whatever the joke was.

* * *

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Mom had this big plan that we would sleepfor the last several hours of the flight, sowhen we landed at eight A.M., we’d hit thecity ready to suck the marrow out of life orwhatever. So after the movie was over, Momand Augustus and I all took sleeping pills.Mom conked out within seconds, but Augus-tus and I stayed up to look out the windowfor a while. It was a clear day, and althoughwe couldn’t see the sun setting, we could seethe sky’s response.

“God, that is beautiful,” I said mostly tomyself.

“‘The risen sun too bright in her losingeyes,’” he said, a line from An ImperialAffliction.

“But it’s not rising,” I said.“It’s rising somewhere,” he answered,

and then after a moment said, “Observation:It would be awesome to fly in a superfast air-plane that could chase the sunrise aroundthe world for a while.”

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“Also I’d live longer.” He looked at measkew. “You know, because of relativity orwhatever.” He still looked confused. “We ageslower when we move quickly versus stand-ing still. So right now time is passing slowerfor us than for people on the ground.”

“College chicks,” he said. “They’re sosmart.”

I rolled my eyes. He hit his (real) kneewith my knee and I hit his knee back withmine. “Are you sleepy?” I asked him.

“Not at all,” he answered.“Yeah,” I said. “Me neither.” Sleeping

meds and narcotics didn’t do for me whatthey did for normal people.

“Want to watch another movie?” heasked. “They’ve got a Portman movie fromher Hazel Era.”

“I want to watch something you haven’tseen.”

In the end we watched 300, a war movieabout 300 Spartans who protect Sparta from

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an invading army of like a billion Persians.Augustus’s movie started before mine again,and after a few minutes of hearing him go,“Dang!” or “Fatality!” every time someonewas killed in some badass way, I leaned overthe armrest and put my head on his shoulderso I could see his screen and we could actu-ally watch the movie together.

300 featured a sizable collection ofshirtless and well-oiled strapping young lads,so it was not particularly difficult on theeyes, but it was mostly a lot of sword wield-ing to no real effect. The bodies of the Per-sians and the Spartans piled up, and Icouldn’t quite figure out why the Persianswere so evil or the Spartans so awesome.“Contemporaneity,” to quote AIA, “special-izes in the kind of battles wherein no oneloses anything of any value, except arguablytheir lives.” And so it was with these titansclashing.

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Toward the end of the movie, almosteveryone is dead, and there is this insanemoment when the Spartans start stackingthe bodies of the dead up to form a wall ofcorpses. The dead become this massive road-block standing between the Persians and theroad to Sparta. I found the gore a bit gratuit-ous, so I looked away for a second, askingAugustus, “How many dead people do youthink there are?”

He dismissed me with a wave. “Shh.Shh. This is getting awesome.”

When the Persians attacked, they had toclimb up the wall of death, and the Spartanswere able to occupy the high ground atop thecorpse mountain, and as the bodies piled up,the wall of martyrs only became higher andtherefore harder to climb, and everybodyswung swords/shot arrows, and the rivers ofblood poured down Mount Death, etc.

I took my head off his shoulder for amoment to get a break from the gore and

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watched Augustus watch the movie. Hecouldn’t contain his goofy grin. I watched myown screen through squinted eyes as themountain grew with the bodies of Persiansand Spartans. When the Persians finallyoverran the Spartans, I looked over atAugustus again. Even though the good guyshad just lost, Augustus seemed downrightjoyful. I nuzzled up to him again, but keptmy eyes closed until the battle was finished.

As the credits rolled, he took off hisheadphones and said, “Sorry, I was awash inthe nobility of sacrifice. What were yousaying?”

“How many dead people do you thinkthere are?”

“Like, how many fictional people died inthat fictional movie? Not enough,” he joked.

“No, I mean, like, ever. Like, how manypeople do you think have ever died?”

“I happen to know the answer to thatquestion,” he said. “There are seven billion

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living people, and about ninety-eight billiondead people.”

“Oh,” I said. I’d thought that maybesince population growth had been so fast,there were more people alive than all thedead combined.

“There are about fourteen dead peoplefor every living person,” he said. The creditscontinued rolling. It took a long time toidentify all those corpses, I guess. My headwas still on his shoulder. “I did some re-search on this a couple years ago,” Augustuscontinued. “I was wondering if everybodycould be remembered. Like, if we got organ-ized, and assigned a certain number ofcorpses to each living person, would there beenough living people to remember all thedead people?”

“And are there?”“Sure, anyone can name fourteen dead

people. But we’re disorganized mourners, soa lot of people end up remembering

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Shakespeare, and no one ends up remember-ing the person he wrote Sonnet Fifty-fiveabout.”

“Yeah,” I said.It was quiet for a minute, and then he

asked, “You want to read or something?” Isaid sure. I was reading this long poemcalled Howl by Allen Ginsberg for my poetryclass, and Gus was rereading An ImperialAffliction.

After a while he said, “Is it any good?”“The poem?” I asked.“Yeah.”“Yeah, it’s great. The guys in this poem

take even more drugs than I do. How’s AIA?”“Still perfect,” he said. “Read to me.”“This isn’t really a poem to read aloud

when you are sitting next to your sleepingmother. It has, like, sodomy and angel dustin it,” I said.

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“You just named two of my favorite pas-times,” he said. “Okay, read me somethingelse then?”

“Um,” I said. “I don’t have anythingelse?”

“That’s too bad. I am so in the mood forpoetry. Do you have anything memorized?”

“‘Let us go then, you and I,’” I startednervously, “‘When the evening is spread outagainst the sky / Like a patient etherizedupon a table.’”

“Slower,” he said.I felt bashful, like I had when I’d first

told him of An Imperial Affliction. “Um,okay. Okay. ‘Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, / The muttering retreats /Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels /And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:/ Streets that follow like a tedious argument/ Of insidious intent / To lead you to anoverwhelming question . . . / Oh, do not ask,“What is it?” / Let us go and make our visit.’”

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“I’m in love with you,” he said quietly.“Augustus,” I said.“I am,” he said. He was staring at me,

and I could see the corners of his eyes crink-ling. “I’m in love with you, and I’m not in thebusiness of denying myself the simple pleas-ure of saying true things. I’m in love withyou, and I know that love is just a shout intothe void, and that oblivion is inevitable, andthat we’re all doomed and that there willcome a day when all our labor has been re-turned to dust, and I know the sun will swal-low the only earth we’ll ever have, and I amin love with you.”

“Augustus,” I said again, not knowingwhat else to say. It felt like everything wasrising up in me, like I was drowning in thisweirdly painful joy, but I couldn’t say it back.I couldn’t say anything back. I just looked athim and let him look at me until he nodded,lips pursed, and turned away, placing theside of his head against the window.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

I think he must have fallen asleep. I did,eventually, and woke to the landing gearcoming down. My mouth tasted horrible, andI tried to keep it shut for fear of poisoningthe airplane.

I looked over at Augustus, who was star-ing out the window, and as we dipped belowthe low-hung clouds, I straightened my backto see the Netherlands. The land seemedsunk into the ocean, little rectangles of greensurrounded on all sides by canals. Welanded, in fact, parallel to a canal, like there

were two runways: one for us and one forwaterfowl.

After getting our bags and clearing cus-toms, we all piled into a taxi driven by thisdoughy bald guy who spoke perfect Eng-lish—like better English than I do. “TheHotel Filosoof?” I said.

And he said, “You are Americans?”“Yes,” Mom said. “We’re from Indiana.”“Indiana,” he said. “They steal the land

from the Indians and leave the name, yes?”“Something like that,” Mom said. The

cabbie pulled out into traffic and we headedtoward a highway with lots of blue signs fea-turing double vowels: Oosthuizen, Haarlem.Beside the highway, flat empty landstretched for miles, interrupted by the occa-sional huge corporate headquarters. In short,Holland looked like Indianapolis, only withsmaller cars. “This is Amsterdam?” I askedthe cabdriver.

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“Yes and no,” he answered. “Amsterdamis like the rings of a tree: It gets older as youget closer to the center.”

It happened all at once: We exited thehighway and there were the row houses ofmy imagination leaning precariously towardcanals, ubiquitous bicycles, and coffeeshopsadvertising LARGE SMOKING ROOM. Wedrove over a canal and from atop the bridge Icould see dozens of houseboats mooredalong the water. It looked nothing like Amer-ica. It looked like an old painting, butreal—everything achingly idyllic in the morn-ing light—and I thought about how wonder-fully strange it would be to live in a placewhere almost everything had been built bythe dead.

“Are these houses very old?” asked mymom.

“Many of the canal houses date from theGolden Age, the seventeenth century,” hesaid. “Our city has a rich history, even

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though many tourists are only wanting to seethe Red Light District.” He paused. “Sometourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, butin truth it is a city of freedom. And in free-dom, most people find sin.”

All the rooms in the Hotel Filosoof werenamed after filosoofers: Mom and I werestaying on the ground floor in the Ki-erkegaard; Augustus was on the floor aboveus, in the Heidegger. Our room was small: adouble bed pressed against a wall with myBiPAP machine, an oxygen concentrator, anda dozen refillable oxygen tanks at the foot ofthe bed. Past the equipment, there was adusty old paisley chair with a sagging seat, adesk, and a bookshelf above the bed contain-ing the collected works of Søren Kierkegaard.On the desk we found a wicker basket full ofpresents from the Genies: wooden shoes, anorange Holland T-shirt, chocolates, and vari-ous other goodies.

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The Filosoof was right next to theVondelpark, Amsterdam’s most famouspark. Mom wanted to go on a walk, but I wassupertired, so she got the BiPAP working andplaced its snout on me. I hated talking withthat thing on, but I said, “Just go to the parkand I’ll call you when I wake up.”

“Okay,” she said. “Sleep tight, honey.”

But when I woke up some hours later, shewas sitting in the ancient little chair in thecorner, reading a guidebook.

“Morning,” I said.“Actually late afternoon,” she answered,

pushing herself out of the chair with a sigh.She came to the bed, placed a tank in thecart, and connected it to the tube while Itook off the BiPAP snout and placed the nub-bins into my nose. She set it for 2.5 liters aminute—six hours before I’d need achange—and then I got up. “How are youfeeling?” she asked.

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“Good,” I said. “Great. How was theVondelpark?”

“I skipped it,” she said. “Read all aboutit in the guidebook, though.”

“Mom,” I said, “you didn’t have to stayhere.”

She shrugged. “I know. I wanted to. Ilike watching you sleep.”

“Said the creeper.” She laughed, but Istill felt bad. “I just want you to have fun orwhatever, you know?”

“Okay. I’ll have fun tonight, okay? I’ll godo crazy mom stuff while you and Augustusgo to dinner.”

“Without you?” I asked.“Yes without me. In fact, you have reser-

vations at a place called Oranjee,” she said.“Mr. Van Houten’s assistant set it up. It’s inthis neighborhood called the Jordaan. Veryfancy, according to the guidebook. There’s atram station right around the corner. Augus-tus has directions. You can eat outside,

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watch the boats go by. It’ll be lovely. Veryromantic.”

“Mom.”“I’m just saying,” she said. “You should

get dressed. The sundress, maybe?”One might marvel at the insanity of the

situation: A mother sends her sixteen-year-old daughter alone with a seventeen-year-oldboy out into a foreign city famous for its per-missiveness. But this, too, was a side effect ofdying: I could not run or dance or eat foodsrich in nitrogen, but in the city of freedom, Iwas among the most liberated of itsresidents.

I did indeed wear the sundress—thisblue print, flowey knee-length Forever 21thing—with tights and Mary Janes because Iliked being quite a lot shorter than him. Iwent into the hilariously tiny bathroom andbattled my bedhead for a while untileverything looked suitably mid-2000s

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Natalie Portman. At six P.M. on the dot (noonback home), there was a knock.

“Hello?” I said through the door. Therewas no peephole at the Hotel Filosoof.

“Okay,” Augustus answered. I couldhear the cigarette in his mouth. I lookeddown at myself. The sundress offered themost in the way of my rib cage and collar-bone that Augustus had seen. It wasn’t ob-scene or anything, but it was as close as Iever got to showing some skin. (My motherhad a motto on this front that I agreed with:“Lancasters don’t bare midriffs.”)

I pulled the door open. Augustus wore ablack suit, narrow lapels, perfectly tailored,over a light blue dress shirt and a thin blacktie. A cigarette dangled from the unsmilingcorner of his mouth. “Hazel Grace,” he said,“you look gorgeous.”

“I,” I said. I kept thinking the rest of mysentence would emerge from the air passingthrough my vocal cords, but nothing

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happened. Then finally, I said, “I feelunderdressed.”

“Ah, this old thing?” he said, smilingdown at me.

“Augustus,” my mom said behind me,“you look extremely handsome.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said. He offeredme his arm. I took it, glancing back to Mom.

“See you by eleven,” she said.

Waiting for the number one tram on a widestreet busy with traffic, I said to Augustus,“The suit you wear to funerals, I assume?”

“Actually, no,” he said. “That suit isn’tnearly this nice.”

The blue-and-white tram arrived, andAugustus handed our cards to the driver,who explained that we needed to wave themat this circular sensor. As we walked throughthe crowded tram, an old man stood up togive us seats together, and I tried to tell himto sit, but he gestured toward the seat

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insistently. We rode the tram for three stops,me leaning over Gus so we could look out thewindow together.

Augustus pointed up at the trees andasked, “Do you see that?”

I did. There were elm trees everywherealong the canals, and these seeds were blow-ing out of them. But they didn’t look likeseeds. They looked for all the world likeminiaturized rose petals drained of their col-or. These pale petals were gathering in thewind like flocking birds—thousands of them,like a spring snowstorm.

The old man who’d given up his seat sawus noticing and said, in English,“Amsterdam’s spring snow. The iepen throwconfetti to greet the spring.”

We switched trams, and after four morestops we arrived at a street split by a beauti-ful canal, the reflections of the ancient bridgeand picturesque canal houses rippling inwater.

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Oranjee was just steps from the tram.The restaurant was on one side of the street;the outdoor seating on the other, on a con-crete outcropping right at the edge of thecanal. The hostess’s eyes lit up as Augustusand I walked toward her. “Mr. and Mrs.Waters?”

“I guess?” I said.“Your table,” she said, gesturing across

the street to a narrow table inches from thecanal. “The champagne is our gift.”

Gus and I glanced at each other, smiling.Once we’d crossed the street, he pulled out aseat for me and helped me scoot it back in.There were indeed two flutes of champagneat our white-tableclothed table. The slightchill in the air was balanced magnificently bythe sunshine; on one side of us, cyclistspedaled past—well-dressed men and womenon their way home from work, improbablyattractive blond girls riding sidesaddle onthe back of a friend’s bike, tiny helmetless

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kids bouncing around in plastic seats behindtheir parents. And on our other side, thecanal water was choked with millions of theconfetti seeds. Little boats were moored atthe brick banks, half full of rainwater, someof them near sinking. A bit farther down thecanal, I could see houseboats floating onpontoons, and in the middle of the canal, anopen-air, flat-bottomed boat decked out withlawn chairs and a portable stereo idled to-ward us. Augustus took his flute of cham-pagne and raised it. I took mine, even thoughI’d never had a drink aside from sips of mydad’s beer.

“Okay,” he said.“Okay,” I said, and we clinked glasses. I

took a sip. The tiny bubbles melted in mymouth and journeyed northward into mybrain. Sweet. Crisp. Delicious. “That is reallygood,” I said. “I’ve never drunk champagne.”

A sturdy young waiter with wavy blondhair appeared. He was maybe even taller

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than Augustus. “Do you know,” he asked in adelicious accent, “what Dom Pérignon saidafter inventing champagne?”

“No?” I said.“He called out to his fellow monks,

‘Come quickly: I am tasting the stars.’ Wel-come to Amsterdam. Would you like to see amenu, or will you have the chef’s choice?”

I looked at Augustus and he at me. “Thechef’s choice sounds lovely, but Hazel is a ve-getarian.” I’d mentioned this to Augustusprecisely once, on the first day we met.

“This is not a problem,” the waiter said.“Awesome. And can we get more of

this?” Gus asked, of the champagne.“Of course,” said our waiter. “We have

bottled all the stars this evening, my youngfriends. Gah, the confetti!” he said, andlightly brushed a seed from my bareshoulder. “It hasn’t been so bad in manyyears. It’s everywhere. Very annoying.”

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The waiter disappeared. We watched theconfetti fall from the sky, skip across theground in the breeze, and tumble into thecanal. “Kind of hard to believe anyone couldever find that annoying,” Augustus said aftera while.

“People always get used to beauty,though.”

“I haven’t gotten used to you just yet,”he answered, smiling. I felt myself blushing.“Thank you for coming to Amsterdam,” hesaid.

“Thank you for letting me hijack yourwish,” I said.

“Thank you for wearing that dress whichis like whoa,” he said. I shook my head, try-ing not to smile at him. I didn’t want to be agrenade. But then again, he knew what hewas doing, didn’t he? It was his choice, too.“Hey, how’s that poem end?” he asked.

“Huh?”

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“The one you recited to me on theplane.”

“Oh, ‘Prufrock’? It ends, ‘We havelingered in the chambers of the sea / By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown /Till human voices wake us, and we drown.’”

Augustus pulled out a cigarette andtapped the filter against the table. “Stupidhuman voices always ruining everything.”

The waiter arrived with two moreglasses of champagne and what he called“Belgian white asparagus with a lavenderinfusion.”

“I’ve never had champagne either,” Gussaid after he left. “In case you were wonder-ing or whatever. Also, I’ve never had whiteasparagus.”

I was chewing my first bite. “It’s amaz-ing,” I promised.

He took a bite, swallowed. “God. If as-paragus tasted like that all the time, I’d be avegetarian, too.” Some people in a lacquered

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wooden boat approached us on the canal be-low. One of them, a woman with curly blondhair, maybe thirty, drank from a beer thenraised her glass toward us and shoutedsomething.

“We don’t speak Dutch,” Gus shoutedback.

One of the others shouted a translation:“The beautiful couple is beautiful.”

The food was so good that with each passingcourse, our conversation devolved further in-to fragmented celebrations of its delicious-ness: “I want this dragon carrot risotto to be-come a person so I can take it to Las Vegasand marry it.” “Sweet-pea sorbet, you are sounexpectedly magnificent.” I wish I’d beenhungrier.

After green garlic gnocchi with red mus-tard leaves, the waiter said, “Dessert next.More stars first?” I shook my head. Twoglasses was enough for me. Champagne was

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no exception to my high tolerance for de-pressants and pain relievers; I felt warm butnot intoxicated. But I didn’t want to getdrunk. Nights like this one didn’t come alongoften, and I wanted to remember it.

“Mmmm,” I said after the waiter left,and Augustus smiled crookedly as he stareddown the canal while I stared up it. We hadplenty to look at, so the silence didn’t feelawkward really, but I wanted everything tobe perfect. It was perfect, I guess, but it feltlike someone had tried to stage the Amster-dam of my imagination, which made it hardto forget that this dinner, like the trip itself,was a cancer perk. I just wanted us to betalking and joking comfortably, like we wereon the couch together back home, but sometension underlay everything.

“It’s not my funeral suit,” he said after awhile. “When I first found out I was sick—Imean, they told me I had like an eighty-fivepercent chance of cure. I know those are

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great odds, but I kept thinking it was a gameof Russian roulette. I mean, I was going tohave to go through hell for six months or ayear and lose my leg and then at the end, itstill might not work, you know?”

“I know,” I said, although I didn’t, notreally. I’d never been anything but terminal;all my treatment had been in pursuit of ex-tending my life, not curing my cancer.Phalanxifor had introduced a measure ofambiguity to my cancer story, but I was dif-ferent from Augustus: My final chapter waswritten upon diagnosis. Gus, like most can-cer survivors, lived with uncertainty.

“Right,” he said. “So I went through thiswhole thing about wanting to be ready. Webought a plot in Crown Hill, and I walkedaround with my dad one day and picked outa spot. And I had my whole funeral plannedout and everything, and then right before thesurgery, I asked my parents if I could buy asuit, like a really nice suit, just in case I bit it.

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Anyway, I’ve never had occasion to wear it.Until tonight.”

“So it’s your death suit.”

“Correct. Don’t you have a death outfit?”“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a dress I bought for

my fifteenth birthday party. But I don’t wearit on dates.”

His eyes lit up. “We’re on a date?” heasked.

I looked down, feeling bashful. “Don’tpush it.”

We were both really full, but dessert—a suc-culently rich crémeux surrounded by passionfruit—was too good not to at least nibble, sowe lingered for a while over dessert, trying toget hungry again. The sun was a toddler in-sistently refusing to go to bed: It was pasteight thirty and still light.

Out of nowhere, Augustus asked, “Doyou believe in an afterlife?”

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“I think forever is an incorrect concept,”I answered.

He smirked. “You’re an incorrectconcept.”

“I know. That’s why I’m being taken outof the rotation.”

“That’s not funny,” he said, looking atthe street. Two girls passed on a bike, oneriding sidesaddle over the back wheel.

“Come on,” I said. “That was a joke.”“The thought of you being removed from

the rotation is not funny to me,” he said.“Seriously, though: afterlife?”

“No,” I said, and then revised. “Well,maybe I wouldn’t go so far as no. You?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice full of confid-ence. “Yes, absolutely. Not like a heavenwhere you ride unicorns, play harps, and livein a mansion made of clouds. But yes. I be-lieve in Something with a capital S. Alwayshave.”

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“Really?” I asked. I was surprised. I’d al-ways associated belief in heaven with,frankly, a kind of intellectual disengagement.But Gus wasn’t dumb.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I believe in thatline from An Imperial Affliction. ‘The risensun too bright in her losing eyes.’ That’s God,I think, the rising sun, and the light is toobright and her eyes are losing but they aren’tlost. I don’t believe we return to haunt orcomfort the living or anything, but I thinksomething becomes of us.”

“But you fear oblivion.”“Sure, I fear earthly oblivion. But, I

mean, not to sound like my parents, but I be-lieve humans have souls, and I believe in theconservation of souls. The oblivion fear issomething else, fear that I won’t be able togive anything in exchange for my life. If youdon’t live a life in service of a greater good,you’ve gotta at least die a death in service ofa greater good, you know? And I fear that I

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won’t get either a life or a death that meansanything.”

I just shook my head.“What?” he asked.“Your obsession with, like, dying for

something or leaving behind some great signof your heroism or whatever. It’s just weird.”

“Everyone wants to lead an extraordin-ary life.”

“Not everyone,” I said, unable to dis-guise my annoyance.

“Are you mad?”“It’s just,” I said, and then couldn’t fin-

ish my sentence. “Just,” I said again.Between us flickered the candle. “It’s reallymean of you to say that the only lives thatmatter are the ones that are lived forsomething or die for something. That’s areally mean thing to say to me.”

I felt like a little kid for some reason,and I took a bite of dessert to make it appearlike it was not that big of a deal to me.

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“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that. Iwas just thinking about myself.”

“Yeah, you were,” I said. I was too full tofinish. I worried I might puke, actually, be-cause I often puked after eating. (Notbulimia, just cancer.) I pushed my dessertplate toward Gus, but he shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, reachingacross the table for my hand. I let him takeit. “I could be worse, you know.”

“How?” I asked, teasing.“I mean, I have a work of calligraphy

over my toilet that reads, ‘Bathe YourselfDaily in the Comfort of God’s Words,’ Hazel.I could be way worse.”

“Sounds unsanitary,” I said.“I could be worse.”“You could be worse.” I smiled. He really

did like me. Maybe I was a narcissist orsomething, but when I realized it there inthat moment at Oranjee, it made me like himeven more.

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When our waiter appeared to takedessert away, he said, “Your meal has beenpaid for by Mr. Peter Van Houten.”

Augustus smiled. “This Peter VanHouten fellow ain’t half bad.”

We walked along the canal as it got dark. Ablock up from Oranjee, we stopped at a parkbench surrounded by old rusty bicycleslocked to bike racks and to each other. Wesat down hip to hip facing the canal, and heput his arm around me.

I could see the halo of light coming fromthe Red Light District. Even though it wasthe Red Light District, the glow coming fromup there was an eerie sort of green. I ima-gined thousands of tourists getting drunkand stoned and pinballing around the nar-row streets.

“I can’t believe he’s going to tell us to-morrow,” I said. “Peter Van Houten is going

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to tell us the famously unwritten end of thebest book ever.”

“Plus he paid for our dinner,” Augustussaid.

“I keep imagining that he is going tosearch us for recording devices before hetells us. And then he will sit down betweenus on the couch in his living room and whis-per whether Anna’s mom married the DutchTulip Man.”

“Don’t forget Sisyphus the Hamster,”Augustus added.

“Right, and also of course what fateawaited Sisyphus the Hamster.” I leaned for-ward, to see into the canal. There were somany of those pale elm petals in the canals,it was ridiculous. “A sequel that will exist justfor us,” I said.

“So what’s your guess?” he asked.“I really don’t know. I’ve gone back and

forth like a thousand times about it all. Each

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time I reread it, I think something different,you know?” He nodded. “You have a theory?”

“Yeah. I don’t think the Dutch TulipMan is a con man, but he’s also not rich likehe leads them to believe. And I think afterAnna dies, Anna’s mom goes to Holland withhim and thinks they will live there forever,but it doesn’t work out, because she wants tobe near where her daughter was.”

I hadn’t realized he’d thought about thebook so much, that An Imperial Afflictionmattered to Gus independently of me mat-tering to him.

The water lapped quietly at the stonecanal walls beneath us; a group of friendsbiked past in a clump, shouting over eachother in rapid-fire, guttural Dutch; the tinyboats, not much longer than me, halfdrowned in the canal; the smell of water thathad stood too still for too long; his armpulling me in; his real leg against my real leg

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all the way from hip to foot. I leaned in to hisbody a little. He winced. “Sorry, you okay?”

He breathed out a yeah in obvious pain.“Sorry,” I said. “Bony shoulder.”“It’s okay,” he said. “Nice, actually.”We sat there for a long time. Eventually

his hand abandoned my shoulder and restedagainst the back of the park bench. Mostlywe just stared into the canal. I was thinking alot about how they’d made this place existeven though it should’ve been underwater,and how I was for Dr. Maria a kind of Ams-terdam, a half-drowned anomaly, and thatmade me think about dying. “Can I ask youabout Caroline Mathers?”

“And you say there’s no afterlife,” heanswered without looking at me. “But yeah,of course. What do you want to know?”

I wanted to know that he would be okayif I died. I wanted to not be a grenade, to notbe a malevolent force in the lives of people Iloved. “Just, like, what happened.”

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He sighed, exhaling for so long that tomy crap lungs it seemed like he was brag-ging. He popped a fresh cigarette into hismouth. “You know how there is famously noplace less played in than a hospital play-ground?” I nodded. “Well, I was at Memorialfor a couple weeks when they took off the legand everything. I was up on the fifth floorand I had a view of the playground, whichwas always of course utterly desolate. I wasall awash in the metaphorical resonance ofthe empty playground in the hospital court-yard. But then this girl started showing upalone at the playground, every day, swingingon a swing completely alone, like you’d see ina movie or something. So I asked one of mynicer nurses to get the skinny on the girl, andthe nurse brought her up to visit, and it wasCaroline, and I used my immense charismato win her over.” He paused, so I decided tosay something.

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“You’re not that charismatic,” I said. Hescoffed, disbelieving. “You’re mostly justhot,” I explained.

He laughed it off. “The thing about deadpeople,” he said, and then stopped himself.“The thing is you sound like a bastard if youdon’t romanticize them, but the truth is . . .complicated, I guess. Like, you are familiarwith the trope of the stoic and determinedcancer victim who heroically fights her can-cer with inhuman strength and never com-plains or stops smiling even at the very end,etcetera?”

“Indeed,” I said. “They are kindheartedand generous souls whose every breath is anInspiration to Us All. They’re so strong! Weadmire them so!”

“Right, but really, I mean aside from usobviously, cancer kids are not statisticallymore likely to be awesome or compassionateor perseverant or whatever. Caroline was al-ways moody and miserable, but I liked it. I

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liked feeling as if she had chosen me as theonly person in the world not to hate, and sowe spent all this time together just raggingon everyone, you know? Ragging on thenurses and the other kids and our familiesand whatever else. But I don’t know if thatwas her or the tumor. I mean, one of hernurses told me once that the kind of tumorCaroline had is known among medical typesas the Asshole Tumor, because it just turnsyou into a monster. So here’s this girl miss-ing a fifth of her brain who’s just had a recur-rence of the Asshole Tumor, and so she wasnot, you know, the paragon of stoic cancer-kid heroism. She was . . . I mean, to be hon-est, she was a bitch. But you can’t say that,because she had this tumor, and also she’s, Imean, she’s dead. And she had plenty ofreason to be unpleasant, you know?”

I knew.“You know that part in An Imperial

Affliction when Anna’s walking across the

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football field to go to PE or whatever and shefalls and goes face-first into the grass andthat’s when she knows that the cancer is backand in her nervous system and she can’t getup and her face is like an inch from thefootball-field grass and she’s just stuck therelooking at this grass up close, noticing theway the light hits it and . . . I don’t rememberthe line but it’s something like Anna havingthe Whitmanesque revelation that the defini-tion of humanness is the opportunity to mar-vel at the majesty of creation or whatever.You know that part?”

“I know that part,” I said.“So afterward, while I was getting evis-

cerated by chemo, for some reason I decidedto feel really hopeful. Not about survival spe-cifically, but I felt like Anna does in the book,that feeling of excitement and gratitudeabout just being able to marvel at it all.

“But meanwhile Caroline got worseevery day. She went home after a while and

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there were moments where I thought wecould have, like, a regular relationship, butwe couldn’t, really, because she had no filterbetween her thoughts and her speech, whichwas sad and unpleasant and frequently hurt-ful. But, I mean, you can’t dump a girl with abrain tumor. And her parents liked me, andshe has this little brother who is a really coolkid. I mean, how can you dump her? She’sdying.

“It took forever. It took almost a year,and it was a year of me hanging out with thisgirl who would, like, just start laughing outof nowhere and point at my prosthetic andcall me Stumpy.”

“No,” I said.“Yeah. I mean, it was the tumor. It ate

her brain, you know? Or it wasn’t the tumor.I have no way of knowing, because they wereinseparable, she and the tumor. But as shegot sicker, I mean, she’d just repeat the samestories and laugh at her own comments even

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if she’d already said the same thing a hun-dred times that day. Like, she made the samejoke over and over again for weeks: ‘Gus hasgreat legs. I mean leg.’ And then she wouldjust laugh like a maniac.”

“Oh, Gus,” I said. “That’s . . .” I didn’tknow what to say. He wasn’t looking at me,and it felt invasive of me to look at him. I felthim scoot forward. He took the cigarette outof his mouth and stared at it, rolling itbetween his thumb and forefinger, then putit back.

“Well,” he said, “to be fair, I do havegreat leg.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”“It’s all good, Hazel Grace. But just to be

clear, when I thought I saw Caroline Math-ers’s ghost in Support Group, I was not en-tirely happy. I was staring, but I wasn’tyearning, if you know what I mean.” Hepulled the pack out of his pocket and placedthe cigarette back in it.

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“I’m sorry,” I said again.“Me too,” he said.“I don’t ever want to do that to you,” I

told him.“Oh, I wouldn’t mind, Hazel Grace. It

would be a privilege to have my heart brokenby you.”

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CHAPTER TWELVE

I woke up at four in the Dutch morningready for the day. All attempts to go back tosleep failed, so I lay there with the BiPAPpumping the air in and urging it out, enjoy-ing the dragon sounds but wishing I couldchoose my breaths.

I reread An Imperial Affliction untilMom woke up and rolled over toward mearound six. She nuzzled her head against myshoulder, which felt uncomfortable andvaguely Augustinian.

The hotel brought a breakfast to ourroom that, much to my delight, featured delimeat among many other denials of Americanbreakfast constructions. The dress I’dplanned to wear to meet Peter Van Houtenhad been moved up in the rotation for theOranjee dinner, so after I showered and gotmy hair to lie halfway flat, I spent like thirtyminutes debating with Mom the various be-nefits and drawbacks of the available outfitsbefore deciding to dress as much like Annain AIA as possible: Chuck Taylors and darkjeans like she always wore, and a light blueT-shirt.

The shirt was a screen print of a famousSurrealist artwork by René Magritte in whichhe drew a pipe and then beneath it wrote incursive Ceci n’est pas une pipe. (“This is nota pipe.”)

“I just don’t get that shirt,” Mom said.

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“Peter Van Houten will get it, trust me.There are like seven thousand Magritte refer-ences in An Imperial Affliction.”

“But it is a pipe.”“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s a drawing of a

pipe. Get it? All representations of a thingare inherently abstract. It’s very clever.”

“How did you get so grown up that youunderstand things that confuse your ancientmother?” Mom asked. “It seems like just yes-terday that I was telling seven-year-old Hazelwhy the sky was blue. You thought I was agenius back then.”

“Why is the sky blue?” I asked.“Cuz,” she answered. I laughed.As it got closer to ten, I grew more and

more nervous: nervous to see Augustus;nervous to meet Peter Van Houten; nervousthat my outfit was not a good outfit; nervousthat we wouldn’t find the right house sinceall the houses in Amsterdam looked prettysimilar; nervous that we would get lost and

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never make it back to the Filosoof; nervousnervous nervous. Mom kept trying to talk tome, but I couldn’t really listen. I was about toask her to go upstairs and make sure Augus-tus was up when he knocked.

I opened the door. He looked down atthe shirt and smiled. “Funny,” he said.

“Don’t call my boobs funny,” Ianswered.

“Right here,” Mom said behind us. ButI’d made Augustus blush and put himenough off his game that I could finally bearto look up at him.

“You sure you don’t want to come?” Iasked Mom.

“I’m going to the Rijksmuseum and theVondelpark today,” she said. “Plus, I justdon’t get his book. No offense. Thank himand Lidewij for us, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. I hugged Mom, and shekissed my head just above my ear.

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Peter Van Houten’s white row house was justaround the corner from the hotel, on theVondelstraat, facing the park. Number 158.Augustus took me by one arm and grabbedthe oxygen cart with the other, and wewalked up the three steps to the lacqueredblue-black front door. My heart pounded.One closed door away from the answers I’ddreamed of ever since I first read that lastunfinished page.

Inside, I could hear a bass beat thump-ing loud enough to rattle the windowsills. Iwondered whether Peter Van Houten had akid who liked rap music.

I grabbed the lion’s-head door knockerand knocked tentatively. The beat continued.“Maybe he can’t hear over the music?”Augustus asked. He grabbed the lion’s headand knocked much louder.

The music disappeared, replaced byshuffled footsteps. A dead bolt slid. Another.The door creaked open. A potbellied man

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with thin hair, sagging jowls, and a week-oldbeard squinted into the sunlight. He worebaby-blue man pajamas like guys in oldmovies. His face and belly were so round,and his arms so skinny, that he looked like adough ball with four sticks stuck into it. “Mr.Van Houten?” Augustus asked, his voicesqueaking a bit.

The door slammed shut. Behind it, Iheard a stammering, reedy voice shout,“LEEE-DUH-VIGH!” (Until then, I’d pro-nounced his assistant’s name like lid-uh-widge.)

We could hear everything through thedoor. “Are they here, Peter?” a woman asked.

“There are—Lidewij, there are two ad-olescent apparitions outside the door.”

“Apparitions?” she asked with a pleasantDutch lilt.

Van Houten answered in a rush. “Phant-asms specters ghouls visitants post-terrestri-als apparitions, Lidewij. How can someone

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pursuing a postgraduate degree in Americanliterature display such abominable English-language skills?”

“Peter, those are not post-terrestrials.They are Augustus and Hazel, the young fanswith whom you have been corresponding.”

“They are—what? They—I thought theywere in America!”

“Yes, but you invited them here, you willremember.”

“Do you know why I left America,Lidewij? So that I would never again have toencounter Americans.”

“But you are an American.”“Incurably so, it seems. But as to these

Americans, you must tell them to leave atonce, that there has been a terrible mistake,that the blessed Van Houten was making arhetorical offer to meet, not an actual one,that such offers must be read symbolically.”

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I thought I might throw up. I lookedover at Augustus, who was staring intently atthe door, and saw his shoulders slacken.

“I will not do this, Peter,” answeredLidewij. “You must meet them. You must.You need to see them. You need to see howyour work matters.”

“Lidewij, did you knowingly deceive meto arrange this?”

A long silence ensued, and then finallythe door opened again. He turned his headmetronomically from Augustus to me, stillsquinting. “Which of you is AugustusWaters?” he asked. Augustus raised his handtentatively. Van Houten nodded and said,“Did you close the deal with that chick yet?”

Whereupon I encountered for the firstand only time a truly speechless AugustusWaters. “I,” he started, “um, I, Hazel, um.Well.”

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“This boy appears to have some kind ofdevelopmental delay,” Peter Van Houtensaid to Lidewij.

“Peter,” she scolded.“Well,” Peter Van Houten said, extend-

ing his hand to me. “It is at any rate a pleas-ure to meet such ontologically improbablecreatures.” I shook his swollen hand, andthen he shook hands with Augustus. I waswondering what ontologically meant.Regardless, I liked it. Augustus and I weretogether in the Improbable Creatures Club:us and duck-billed platypuses.

Of course, I had hoped that Peter VanHouten would be sane, but the world is not awish-granting factory. The important thingwas that the door was open and I was cross-ing the threshold to learn what happens afterthe end of An Imperial Affliction. That wasenough. We followed him and Lidewij inside,past a huge oak dining room table with onlytwo chairs, into a creepily sterile living room.

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It looked like a museum, except there was noart on the empty white walls. Aside from onecouch and one lounge chair, both a mix ofsteel and black leather, the room seemedempty. Then I noticed two large blackgarbage bags, full and twist-tied, behind thecouch.

“Trash?” I mumbled to Augustus softenough that I thought no one else wouldhear.

“Fan mail,” Van Houten answered as hesat down in the lounge chair. “Eighteenyears’ worth of it. Can’t open it. Terrifying.Yours are the first missives to which I havereplied, and look where that got me. I franklyfind the reality of readers whollyunappetizing.”

That explained why he’d never replied tomy letters: He’d never read them. Iwondered why he kept them at all, let alonein an otherwise empty formal living room.Van Houten kicked his feet up onto the

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ottoman and crossed his slippers. He mo-tioned toward the couch. Augustus and I satdown next to each other, but not too next.

“Would you care for some breakfast?”asked Lidewij.

I started to say that we’d already eatenwhen Peter interrupted. “It is far too earlyfor breakfast, Lidewij.”

“Well, they are from America, Peter, soit is past noon in their bodies.”

“Then it’s too late for breakfast,” he said.“However, it being after noon in the bodyand whatnot, we should enjoy a cocktail. Doyou drink Scotch?” he asked me.

“Do I—um, no, I’m fine,” I said.“Augustus Waters?” Van Houten asked,

nodding toward Gus.“Uh, I’m good.”“Just me, then, Lidewij. Scotch and wa-

ter, please.” Peter turned his attention toGus, asking, “You know how we make aScotch and water in this home?”

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“No, sir,” Gus said.“We pour Scotch into a glass and then

call to mind thoughts of water, and then wemix the actual Scotch with the abstractedidea of water.”

Lidewij said, “Perhaps a bit of breakfastfirst, Peter.”

He looked toward us and stage-whispered, “She thinks I have a drinkingproblem.”

“And I think that the sun has risen,”Lidewij responded. Nonetheless, she turnedto the bar in the living room, reached up fora bottle of Scotch, and poured a glass halffull. She carried it to him. Peter Van Houtentook a sip, then sat up straight in his chair.“A drink this good deserves one’s best pos-ture,” he said.

I became conscious of my own postureand sat up a little on the couch. I rearrangedmy cannula. Dad always told me that you canjudge people by the way they treat waiters

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and assistants. By this measure, Peter VanHouten was possibly the world’s douchiestdouche. “So you like my book,” he said toAugustus after another sip.

“Yeah,” I said, speaking up on Augus-tus’s behalf. “And yes, we—well, Augustus,he made meeting you his Wish so that wecould come here, so that you could tell uswhat happens after the end of An ImperialAffliction.”

Van Houten said nothing, just took along pull on his drink.

After a minute, Augustus said, “Yourbook is sort of the thing that brought ustogether.”

“But you aren’t together,” he observedwithout looking at me.

“The thing that brought us nearly to-gether,” I said.

Now he turned to me. “Did you dresslike her on purpose?”

“Anna?” I asked.

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He just kept staring at me.“Kind of,” I said.He took a long drink, then grimaced. “I

do not have a drinking problem,” he an-nounced, his voice needlessly loud. “I have aChurchillian relationship with alcohol: I cancrack jokes and govern England and do any-thing I want to do. Except not drink.” Heglanced over at Lidewij and nodded towardhis glass. She took it, then walked back to thebar. “Just the idea of water, Lidewij,” heinstructed.

“Yah, got it,” she said, the accent almostAmerican.

The second drink arrived. Van Houten’sspine stiffened again out of respect. Hekicked off his slippers. He had really uglyfeet. He was rather ruining the whole busi-ness of authorial genius for me. But he hadthe answers.

“Well, um,” I said, “first, we do want tosay thank you for dinner last night and—”

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“We bought them dinner last night?”Van Houten asked Lidewij.

“Yes, at Oranjee.”“Ah, yes. Well, believe me when I say

that you do not have me to thank but ratherLidewij, who is exceptionally talented in thefield of spending my money.”

“It was our pleasure,” Lidewij said.“Well, thanks, at any rate,” Augustus

said. I could hear annoyance in his voice.“So here I am,” Van Houten said after a

moment. “What are your questions?”“Um,” Augustus said.“He seemed so intelligent in print,” Van

Houten said to Lidewij regarding Augustus.“Perhaps the cancer has established a beach-head in his brain.”

“Peter,” Lidewij said, duly horrified.I was horrified, too, but there was

something pleasant about a guy so despic-able that he wouldn’t treat us deferentially.“We do have some questions, actually,” I

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said. “I talked about them in my email. Idon’t know if you remember.”

“I do not.”“His memory is compromised,” Lidewij

said.“If only my memory would comprom-

ise,” Van Houten responded.“So, our questions,” I repeated.“She uses the royal we,” Peter said to no

one in particular. Another sip. I didn’t knowwhat Scotch tasted like, but if it tasted any-thing like champagne, I couldn’t imaginehow he could drink so much, so quickly, soearly in the morning. “Are you familiar withZeno’s tortoise paradox?” he asked me.

“We have questions about what happensto the characters after the end of the book,specifically Anna’s—”

“You wrongly assume that I need to hearyour question in order to answer it. You arefamiliar with the philosopher Zeno?” I shookmy head vaguely. “Alas. Zeno was a pre-

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Socratic philosopher who is said to have dis-covered forty paradoxes within the world-view put forth by Parmenides—surely youknow Parmenides,” he said, and I noddedthat I knew Parmenides, although I did not.“Thank God,” he said. “Zeno professionallyspecialized in revealing the inaccuracies andoversimplifications of Parmenides, whichwasn’t difficult, since Parmenides was spec-tacularly wrong everywhere and always. Par-menides is valuable in precisely the way thatit is valuable to have an acquaintance whoreliably picks the wrong horse each andevery time you take him to the racetrack. ButZeno’s most important—wait, give me asense of your familiarity with Swedish hip-hop.”

I could not tell if Peter Van Houten waskidding. After a moment, Augustus answeredfor me. “Limited,” he said.

“Okay, but presumably you know Afasioch Filthy’s seminal album Fläcken.”

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“We do not,” I said for the both of us.“Lidewij, play ‘Bomfalleralla’ immedi-

ately.” Lidewij walked over to an MP3 player,spun the wheel a bit, then hit a button. A rapsong boomed from every direction. It soun-ded like a fairly regular rap song, except thewords were in Swedish.

After it was over, Peter Van Houtenlooked at us expectantly, his little eyes aswide as they could get. “Yeah?” he asked.“Yeah?”

I said, “I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t speakSwedish.”

“Well, of course you don’t. Neither do I.Who the hell speaks Swedish? The importantthing is not whatever nonsense the voices aresaying, but what the voices are feeling.Surely you know that there are only twoemotions, love and fear, and that Afasi ochFilthy navigate between them with the kindof facility that one simply does not find in

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hip-hop music outside of Sweden. Shall Iplay it for you again?”

“Are you joking?” Gus said.“Pardon?”“Is this some kind of performance?” He

looked up at Lidewij and asked, “Is it?”“I’m afraid not,” Lidewij answered.

“He’s not always—this is unusually—”“Oh, shut up, Lidewij. Rudolf Otto said

that if you had not encountered the numin-ous, if you have not experienced a nonration-al encounter with the mysterium tremen-dum, then his work was not for you. And Isay to you, young friends, that if you cannothear Afasi och Filthy’s bravadic response tofear, then my work is not for you.”

I cannot emphasize this enough: It was acompletely normal rap song, except inSwedish. “Um,” I said. “So about An Imperi-al Affliction. Anna’s mom, when the bookends, is about to—”

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Van Houten interrupted me, tapping hisglass as he talked until Lidewij refilled itagain. “So Zeno is most famous for his tor-toise paradox. Let us imagine that you are ina race with a tortoise. The tortoise has a ten-yard head start. In the time it takes you torun that ten yards, the tortoise has maybemoved one yard. And then in the time ittakes you to make up that distance, the tor-toise goes a bit farther, and so on forever.You are faster than the tortoise but you cannever catch him; you can only decrease hislead.

“Of course, you just run past the tortoisewithout contemplating the mechanics in-volved, but the question of how you are ableto do this turns out to be incredibly complic-ated, and no one really solved it until Cantorshowed us that some infinities are biggerthan other infinities.”

“Um,” I said.

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“I assume that answers your question,”he said confidently, then sipped generouslyfrom his glass.

“Not really,” I said. “We were wonder-ing, after the end of An Imperial Affliction—”

“I disavow everything in that putrid nov-el,” Van Houten said, cutting me off.

“No,” I said.“Excuse me?”“No, that is not acceptable,” I said. “I

understand that the story ends midnarrativebecause Anna dies or becomes too sick tocontinue, but you said you would tell us whathappens to everybody, and that’s why we’rehere, and we, I need you to tell me.”

Van Houten sighed. After another drink,he said, “Very well. Whose story do youseek?”

“Anna’s mom, the Dutch Tulip Man,Sisyphus the Hamster, I mean, just—whathappens to everyone.”

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Van Houten closed his eyes and puffedhis cheeks as he exhaled, then looked up atthe exposed wooden beams crisscrossing theceiling. “The hamster,” he said after a while.“The hamster gets adopted byChristine”—who was one of Anna’s presick-ness friends. That made sense. Christine andAnna played with Sisyphus in a few scenes.“He is adopted by Christine and lives for acouple years after the end of the novel anddies peacefully in his hamster sleep.”

Now we were getting somewhere.“Great,” I said. “Great. Okay, so the DutchTulip Man. Is he a con man? Do he andAnna’s mom get married?”

Van Houten was still staring at the ceil-ing beams. He took a drink. The glass was al-most empty again. “Lidewij, I can’t do it. Ican’t. I can’t.” He leveled his gaze to me.“Nothing happens to the Dutch Tulip Man.He isn’t a con man or not a con man; he’sGod. He’s an obvious and unambiguous

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metaphorical representation of God, andasking what becomes of him is the intellectu-al equivalent of asking what becomes of thedisembodied eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg inGatsby. Do he and Anna’s mom get married?We are speaking of a novel, dear child, notsome historical enterprise.”

“Right, but surely you must havethought about what happens to them, I meanas characters, I mean independent of theirmetaphorical meanings or whatever.”

“They’re fictions,” he said, tapping hisglass again. “Nothing happens to them.”

“You said you’d tell me,” I insisted. I re-minded myself to be assertive. I needed tokeep his addled attention on my questions.

“Perhaps, but I was under the misguidedimpression that you were incapable oftransatlantic travel. I was trying . . . toprovide you some comfort, I suppose, whichI should know better than to attempt. But tobe perfectly frank, this childish idea that the

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author of a novel has some special insight in-to the characters in the novel . . . it’s ridicu-lous. That novel was composed of scratcheson a page, dear. The characters inhabiting ithave no life outside of those scratches. Whathappened to them? They all ceased to existthe moment the novel ended.”

“No,” I said. I pushed myself up off thecouch. “No, I understand that, but it’s im-possible not to imagine a future for them.You are the most qualified person to imaginethat future. Something happened to Anna’smother. She either got married or didn’t. Sheeither moved to Holland with the DutchTulip Man or didn’t. She either had morekids or didn’t. I need to know what happensto her.”

Van Houten pursed his lips. “I regretthat I cannot indulge your childish whims,but I refuse to pity you in the manner towhich you are well accustomed.”

“I don’t want your pity,” I said.

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“Like all sick children,” he answered dis-passionately, “you say you don’t want pity,but your very existence depends upon it.”

“Peter,” Lidewij said, but he continuedas he reclined there, his words gettingrounder in his drunken mouth. “Sick chil-dren inevitably become arrested: You arefated to live out your days as the child youwere when diagnosed, the child who believesthere is life after a novel ends. And we, asadults, we pity this, so we pay for your treat-ments, for your oxygen machines. We giveyou food and water though you are unlikelyto live long enough—”

“PETER!” Lidewij shouted.“You are a side effect,” Van Houten con-

tinued, “of an evolutionary process that careslittle for individual lives. You are a failed ex-periment in mutation.”

“I RESIGN!” Lidewij shouted. Therewere tears in her eyes. But I wasn’t angry. Hewas looking for the most hurtful way to tell

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the truth, but of course I already knew thetruth. I’d had years of staring at ceilings frommy bedroom to the ICU, and so I’d long agofound the most hurtful ways to imagine myown illness. I stepped toward him. “Listen,douchepants,” I said, “you’re not going to tellme anything about disease I don’t alreadyknow. I need one and only one thing fromyou before I walk out of your life forever:WHAT HAPPENS TO ANNA’S MOTHER?”

He raised his flabby chins vaguely to-ward me and shrugged his shoulders. “I canno more tell you what happens to her than Ican tell you what becomes of Proust’s Nar-rator or Holden Caulfield’s sister or Huckle-berry Finn after he lights out for theterritories.”

“BULLSHIT! That’s bullshit. Just tellme! Make something up!”

“No, and I’ll thank you not to curse inmy house. It isn’t becoming of a lady.”

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I still wasn’t angry, exactly, but I wasvery focused on getting the thing I’d beenpromised. Something inside me welled upand I reached down and smacked theswollen hand that held the glass of Scotch.What remained of the Scotch splashed acrossthe vast expanse of his face, the glass boun-cing off his nose and then spinning balletic-ally through the air, landing with a shatter-ing crash on the ancient hardwood floors.

“Lidewij,” Van Houten said calmly, “I’llhave a martini, if you please. Just a whisperof vermouth.”

“I have resigned,” Lidewij said after amoment.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”I didn’t know what to do. Being nice

hadn’t worked. Being mean hadn’t worked. Ineeded an answer. I’d come all this way, hi-jacked Augustus’s Wish. I needed to know.

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“Have you ever stopped to wonder,” hesaid, his words slurring now, “why you careso much about your silly questions?”

“YOU PROMISED!” I shouted, hearingIsaac’s impotent wailing echoing from thenight of the broken trophies. Van Houtendidn’t reply.

I was still standing over him, waiting forhim to say something to me when I feltAugustus’s hand on my arm. He pulled meaway toward the door, and I followed himwhile Van Houten ranted to Lidewij aboutthe ingratitude of contemporary teenagersand the death of polite society, and Lidewij,somewhat hysterical, shouted back at him inrapid-fire Dutch.

“You’ll have to forgive my former assist-ant,” he said. “Dutch is not so much a lan-guage as an ailment of the throat.”

Augustus pulled me out of the room andthrough the door to the late spring morningand the falling confetti of the elms.

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* * *

For me there was no such thing as a quickgetaway, but we made our way down thestairs, Augustus holding my cart, and thenstarted to walk back toward the Filosoof on abumpy sidewalk of interwoven rectangularbricks. For the first time since the swing set,I started crying.

“Hey,” he said, touching my waist. “Hey.It’s okay.” I nodded and wiped my face withthe back of my hand. “He sucks.” I noddedagain. “I’ll write you an epilogue,” Gus said.That made me cry harder. “I will,” he said. “Iwill. Better than any shit that drunk couldwrite. His brain is Swiss cheese. He doesn’teven remember writing the book. I can writeten times the story that guy can. There willbe blood and guts and sacrifice. An ImperialAffliction meets The Price of Dawn. You’lllove it.” I kept nodding, faking a smile, andthen he hugged me, his strong arms pullingme into his muscular chest, and I sogged up

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his polo shirt a little but then recoveredenough to speak.

“I spent your Wish on that doucheface,”I said into his chest.

“Hazel Grace. No. I will grant you thatyou did spend my one and only Wish, butyou did not spend it on him. You spent it onus.”

Behind us, I heard the plonk plonk ofhigh heels running. I turned around. It wasLidewij, her eyeliner running down hercheeks, duly horrified, chasing us up thesidewalk. “Perhaps we should go to the AnneFrank Huis,” Lidewij said.

“I’m not going anywhere with that mon-ster,” Augustus said.

“He is not invited,” Lidewij said.Augustus kept holding me, protective,

his hand on the side of my face. “I don’tthink—” he started, but I cut him off.

“We should go.” I still wanted answersfrom Van Houten. But it wasn’t all I wanted.

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I only had two days left in Amsterdam withAugustus Waters. I wouldn’t let a sad oldman ruin them.

Lidewij drove a clunky gray Fiat with an en-gine that sounded like an excited four-year-old girl. As we drove through the streets ofAmsterdam, she repeatedly and profuselyapologized. “I am very sorry. There is no ex-cuse. He is very sick,” she said. “I thoughtmeeting you would help him, if he would seethat his work has shaped real lives, but . . .I’m very sorry. It is very, very embarrassing.”Neither Augustus nor I said anything. I wasin the backseat behind him. I snuck my handbetween the side of the car and his seat, feel-ing for his hand, but I couldn’t find it.Lidewij continued, “I have continued thiswork because I believe he is a genius and be-cause the pay is very good, but he has be-come a monster.”

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“I guess he got pretty rich on that book,”I said after a while.

“Oh, no no, he is of the Van Houtens,”she said. “In the seventeenth century, his an-cestor discovered how to mix cocoa into wa-ter. Some Van Houtens moved to the UnitedStates long ago, and Peter is of those, but hemoved to Holland after his novel. He is anembarrassment to a great family.”

The engine screamed. Lidewij shiftedand we shot up a canal bridge. “It is circum-stance,” she said. “Circumstance has madehim so cruel. He is not an evil man. But thisday, I did not think—when he said these ter-rible things, I could not believe it. I am verysorry. Very very sorry.”

We had to park a block away from the AnneFrank House, and then while Lidewij stoodin line to get tickets for us, I sat with my backagainst a little tree, looking at all the mooredhouseboats in the Prinsengracht canal.

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Augustus was standing above me, rolling myoxygen cart in lazy circles, just watching thewheels spin. I wanted him to sit next to me,but I knew it was hard for him to sit, andharder still to stand back up. “Okay?” heasked, looking down at me. I shrugged andreached a hand for his calf. It was his fakecalf, but I held on to it. He looked down atme.

“I wanted . . .” I said.“I know,” he said. “I know. Apparently

the world is not a wish-granting factory.”That made me smile a little.

Lidewij returned with tickets, but herthin lips were pursed with worry. “There isno elevator,” she said. “I am very very sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said.“No, there are many stairs,” she said.

“Steep stairs.”“It’s okay,” I said again. Augustus star-

ted to say something, but I interrupted. “It’sokay. I can do it.”

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We began in a room with a video aboutJews in Holland and the Nazi invasion andthe Frank family. Then we walked upstairsinto the canal house where Otto Frank’sbusiness had been. The stairs were slow, forme and Augustus both, but I felt strong.Soon I was staring at the famous bookcasethat had hid Anne Frank, her family, andfour others. The bookcase was half open, andbehind it was an even steeper set of stairs,only wide enough for one person. There werefellow visitors all around us, and I didn’twant to hold up the procession, but Lidewijsaid, “If everyone could be patient, please,”and I began the walk up, Lidewij carrying thecart behind me, Gus behind her.

It was fourteen steps. I kept thinkingabout the people behind me—they weremostly adults speaking a variety of lan-guages—and feeling embarrassed orwhatever, feeling like a ghost that both com-forts and haunts, but finally I made it up,

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and then I was in an eerily empty room,leaning against the wall, my brain telling mylungs it’s okay it’s okay calm down it’s okayand my lungs telling my brain oh, God, we’redying here. I didn’t even see Augustus comeupstairs, but he came over and wiped hisbrow with the back of his hand like whewand said, “You’re a champion.”

After a few minutes of wall-leaning, Imade it to the next room, which Anne hadshared with the dentist Fritz Pfeffer. It wastiny, empty of all furniture. You’d neverknow anyone had ever lived there except thatthe pictures Anne had pasted onto the wallfrom magazines and newspapers were stillthere.

Another staircase led up to the roomwhere the van Pels family had lived, this onesteeper than the last and eighteen steps, es-sentially a glorified ladder. I got to thethreshold and looked up and figured I could

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not do it, but also knew the only way throughwas up.

“Let’s go back,” Gus said behind me.“I’m okay,” I answered quietly. It’s stu-

pid, but I kept thinking I owed it to her—toAnne Frank, I mean—because she was deadand I wasn’t, because she had stayed quietand kept the blinds drawn and doneeverything right and still died, and so Ishould go up the steps and see the rest of theworld she’d lived in those years before theGestapo came.

I began to climb the stairs, crawling upthem like a little kid would, slow at first so Icould breathe, but then faster because Iknew I couldn’t breathe and wanted to get tothe top before everything gave out. Theblackness encroached around my field of vis-ion as I pulled myself up, eighteen steps,steep as hell. I finally crested the staircasemostly blind and nauseated, the muscles inmy arms and legs screaming for oxygen. I

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slumped seated against a wall, heavingwatered-down coughs. There was an emptyglass case bolted to the wall above me and Istared up through it to the ceiling and triednot to pass out.

Lidewij crouched down next to me, say-ing, “You are at the top, that is it,” and I nod-ded. I had a vague awareness of the adults allaround glancing down at me worriedly; ofLidewij speaking quietly in one language andthen another and then another to variousvisitors; of Augustus standing above me, hishand on the top of my head, stroking my hairalong the part.

After a long time, Lidewij and Augustuspulled me to my feet and I saw what was pro-tected by the glass case: pencil marks on thewallpaper measuring the growth of all thechildren in the annex during the period theylived there, inch after inch until they wouldgrow no more.

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From there, we left the Franks’ livingarea, but we were still in the museum: A longnarrow hallway showed pictures of each ofthe annex’s eight residents and describedhow and where and when they died.

“The only member of his whole familywho survived the war,” Lidewij told us, refer-ring to Anne’s father, Otto. Her voice washushed like we were in church.

“But he didn’t survive a war, not really,”Augustus said. “He survived a genocide.”

“True,” Lidewij said. “I do not know howyou go on, without your family. I do notknow.” As I read about each of the seven whodied, I thought of Otto Frank not being afather anymore, left with a diary instead of awife and two daughters. At the end of thehallway, a huge book, bigger than a diction-ary, contained the names of the 103,000dead from the Netherlands in the Holocaust.(Only 5,000 of the deported Dutch Jews, awall label explained, had survived. 5,000

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Otto Franks.) The book was turned to thepage with Anne Frank’s name, but what gotme about it was the fact that right beneathher name there were four Aron Franks. Four.Four Aron Franks without museums,without historical markers, without anyoneto mourn them. I silently resolved to remem-ber and pray for the four Aron Franks as longas I was around. (Maybe some people needto believe in a proper and omnipotent God topray, but I don’t.)

As we got to the end of the room, Gusstopped and said, “You okay?” I nodded.

He gestured back toward Anne’s picture.“The worst part is that she almost lived, youknow? She died weeks away from liberation.”

Lidewij took a few steps away to watch avideo, and I grabbed Augustus’s hand as wewalked into the next room. It was an A-frameroom with some letters Otto Frank had writ-ten to people during his months-long searchfor his daughters. On the wall in the middle

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of the room, a video of Otto Frank played. Hewas speaking in English.

“Are there any Nazis left that I couldhunt down and bring to justice?” Augustusasked while we leaned over the vitrines read-ing Otto’s letters and the gutting replies thatno, no one had seen his children after theliberation.

“I think they’re all dead. But it’s not likethe Nazis had a monopoly on evil.”

“True,” he said. “That’s what we shoulddo, Hazel Grace: We should team up and bethis disabled vigilante duo roaring throughthe world, righting wrongs, defending theweak, protecting the endangered.”

Although it was his dream and not mine,I indulged it. He’d indulged mine, after all.“Our fearlessness shall be our secretweapon,” I said.

“The tales of our exploits will survive aslong as the human voice itself,” he said.

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“And even after that, when the robotsrecall the human absurdities of sacrifice andcompassion, they will remember us.”

“They will robot-laugh at our cour-ageous folly,” he said. “But something intheir iron robot hearts will yearn to havelived and died as we did: on the hero’serrand.”

“Augustus Waters,” I said, looking up athim, thinking that you cannot kiss anyone inthe Anne Frank House, and then thinkingthat Anne Frank, after all, kissed someone inthe Anne Frank House, and that she wouldprobably like nothing more than for herhome to have become a place where theyoung and irreparably broken sink into love.

“I must say,” Otto Frank said on thevideo in his accented English, “I was verymuch surprised by the deep thoughts Annehad.”

And then we were kissing. My hand letgo of the oxygen cart and I reached up for his

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neck, and he pulled me up by my waist ontomy tiptoes. As his parted lips met mine, Istarted to feel breathless in a new and fascin-ating way. The space around us evaporated,and for a weird moment I really liked mybody; this cancer-ruined thing I’d spentyears dragging around suddenly seemedworth the struggle, worth the chest tubes andthe PICC lines and the ceaseless bodily be-trayal of the tumors.

“It was quite a different Anne I hadknown as my daughter. She never reallyshowed this kind of inner feeling,” OttoFrank continued.

The kiss lasted forever as Otto Frankkept talking from behind me. “And my con-clusion is,” he said, “since I had been in verygood terms with Anne, that most parentsdon’t know really their children.”

I realized that my eyes were closed andopened them. Augustus was staring at me,his blue eyes closer to me than they’d ever

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been, and behind him, a crowd of peoplethree deep had sort of circled around us.They were angry, I thought. Horrified. Theseteenagers, with their hormones, making outbeneath a video broadcasting the shatteredvoice of a former father.

I pulled away from Augustus, and hesnuck a peck onto my forehead as I stareddown at my Chuck Taylors. And then theystarted clapping. All the people, all theseadults, just started clapping, and oneshouted “Bravo!” in a European accent.Augustus, smiling, bowed. Laughing, I curt-sied ever so slightly, which was met with an-other round of applause.

We made our way downstairs, letting allthe adults go down first, and right before wegot to the café (where blessedly an elevatortook us back down to ground level and thegift shop) we saw pages of Anne’s diary, andalso her unpublished book of quotations. Thequote book happened to be turned to a page

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of Shakespeare quotations. For who so firmthat cannot be seduced? she’d written.

Lidewij drove us back to the Filosoof. Out-side the hotel, it was drizzling and Augustusand I stood on the brick sidewalk slowly get-ting wet.

Augustus: “You probably need somerest.”

Me: “I’m okay.”Augustus: “Okay.” (Pause.) “What are

you thinking about?”Me: “You.”Augustus: “What about me?”Me: “‘I do not know which to prefer, /

The beauty of inflections / Or the beauty ofinnuendos, / The blackbird whistling / Orjust after.’”

Augustus: “God, you are sexy.”Me: “We could go to your room.”Augustus: “I’ve heard worse ideas.”

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We squeezed into the tiny elevator together.Every surface, including the floor, wasmirrored. We had to pull the door to shutourselves in and then the old thing creakedslowly up to the second floor. I was tired andsweaty and worried that I generally lookedand smelled gross, but even so I kissed himin that elevator, and then he pulled away andpointed at the mirror and said, “Look, infin-ite Hazels.”

“Some infinities are larger than other in-finities,” I drawled, mimicking Van Houten.

“What an assclown,” Augustus said, andit took all that time and more just to get us tothe second floor. Finally the elevator lurchedto a halt, and he pushed the mirrored dooropen. When it was half open, he winced inpain and lost his grip on the door for asecond.

“You okay?” I asked.After a second, he said, “Yeah, yeah,

door’s just heavy, I guess.” He pushed again

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and got it open. He let me walk out first, ofcourse, but then I didn’t know which direc-tion to walk down the hallway, and so I juststood there outside the elevator and he stoodthere, too, his face still contorted, and I saidagain, “Okay?”

“Just out of shape, Hazel Grace. All iswell.”

We were just standing there in the hall-way, and he wasn’t leading the way to hisroom or anything, and I didn’t know wherehis room was, and as the stalemate contin-ued, I became convinced he was trying to fig-ure out a way not to hook up with me, that Inever should have suggested the idea in thefirst place, that it was unladylike and there-fore had disgusted Augustus Waters, whowas standing there looking at me unblinking,trying to think of a way to extricate himselffrom the situation politely. And then, afterforever, he said, “It’s above my knee and it

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just tapers a little and then it’s just skin.There’s a nasty scar, but it just looks like—”

“What?” I asked.“My leg,” he said. “Just so you’re pre-

pared in case, I mean, in case you see it orwhat—”

“Oh, get over yourself,” I said, and tookthe two steps I needed to get to him. I kissedhim, hard, pressing him against the wall, andI kept kissing him as he fumbled for theroom key.

We crawled into the bed, my freedom cir-cumscribed some by the oxygen, but even soI could get on top of him and take his shirtoff and taste the sweat on the skin below hiscollarbone as I whispered into his skin, “Ilove you, Augustus Waters,” his body relax-ing beneath mine as he heard me say it. Hereached down and tried to pull my shirt off,but it got tangled in the tube. I laughed.

* * *

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“How do you do this every day?” he asked asI disentangled my shirt from the tubes. Idiot-ically, it occurred to me that my pink under-wear didn’t match my purple bra, as if boyseven notice such things. I crawled under thecovers and kicked out of my jeans and socksand then watched the comforter dance as be-neath it, Augustus removed first his jeansand then his leg.

* * *

We were lying on our backs next to each oth-er, everything hidden by the covers, and aftera second I reached over for his thigh and letmy hand trail downward to the stump, thethick scarred skin. I held the stump for asecond. He flinched. “It hurts?” I asked.

“No,” he said.He flipped himself onto his side and

kissed me. “You’re so hot,” I said, my handstill on his leg.

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“I’m starting to think you have an am-putee fetish,” he answered, still kissing me. Ilaughed.

“I have an Augustus Waters fetish,” Iexplained.

The whole affair was the precise opposite ofwhat I figured it would be: slow and patientand quiet and neither particularly painfulnor particularly ecstatic. There were a lot ofcondomy problems that I did not get a par-ticularly good look at. No headboards werebroken. No screaming. Honestly, it wasprobably the longest time we’d ever spent to-gether without talking.

Only one thing followed type: After-ward, when I had my face resting againstAugustus’s chest, listening to his heartpound, Augustus said, “Hazel Grace, I liter-ally cannot keep my eyes open.”

“Misuse of literality,” I said.“No,” he said. “So. Tired.”

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His face turned away from me, my earpressed to his chest, listening to his lungssettle into the rhythm of sleep. After a while,I got up, dressed, found the Hotel Filosoofstationery, and wrote him a love letter:

Dearest Augustus,

yrs,Hazel Grace

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CHAPTERTHIRTEEN

The next morning, our last full day in Ams-terdam, Mom and Augustus and I walked thehalf block from the hotel to the Vondelpark,where we found a café in the shadow of theDutch national film museum. Overlattes—which, the waiter explained to us, theDutch called “wrong coffee” because it hadmore milk than coffee—we sat in the lacyshade of a huge chestnut tree and recountedfor Mom our encounter with the great Peter

Van Houten. We made the story funny. Youhave a choice in this world, I believe, abouthow to tell sad stories, and we made thefunny choice: Augustus, slumped in the caféchair, pretended to be the tongue-tied, word-slurring Van Houten who could not so muchas push himself out of his chair; I stood up toplay a me all full of bluster and machismo,shouting, “Get up, you fat ugly old man!”

“Did you call him ugly?” Augustusasked.

“Just go with it,” I told him.“I’m naht uggy. You’re the uggy one,

nosetube girl.”“You’re a coward!” I rumbled, and

Augustus broke character to laugh. I satdown. We told Mom about the Anne FrankHouse, leaving out the kissing.

“Did you go back to chez Van Houten af-terward?” Mom asked.

Augustus didn’t even give me time toblush. “Nah, we just hung out at a café. Hazel

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amused me with some Venn diagram hu-mor.” He glanced at me. God, he was sexy.

“Sounds lovely,” she said. “Listen, I’mgoing to go for a walk. Give the two of youtime to talk,” she said at Gus, an edge in it.“Then maybe later we can go for a tour on acanal boat.”

“Um, okay?” I said. Mom left a five-euronote under her saucer and then kissed me onthe top of the head, whispering, “I love lovelove you,” which was two more loves thanusual.

Gus motioned down to the shadows ofthe branches intersecting and coming aparton the concrete. “Beautiful, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said.“Such a good metaphor,” he mumbled.“Is it now?” I asked.“The negative image of things blown to-

gether and then blown apart,” he said. Beforeus, hundreds of people passed, jogging andbiking and Rollerblading. Amsterdam was a

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city designed for movement and activity, acity that would rather not travel by car, andso inevitably I felt excluded from it. But God,was it beautiful, the creek carving a patharound the huge tree, a heron standing stillat the water’s edge, searching for a breakfastamid the millions of elm petals floating inthe water.

But Augustus didn’t notice. He was toobusy watching the shadows move. Finally, hesaid, “I could look at this all day, but weshould go to the hotel.”

“Do we have time?” I asked.He smiled sadly. “If only,” he said.“What’s wrong?” I asked.He nodded back in the direction of the

hotel.

We walked in silence, Augustus a half step infront of me. I was too scared to ask if I hadreason to be scared.

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So there is this thing called Maslow’s Hi-erarchy of Needs. Basically, this guy Abra-ham Maslow became famous for his theorythat certain needs must be met before youcan even have other kinds of needs. It lookslike this:

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Once your needs for food and water arefulfilled, you move up to the next set ofneeds, security, and then the next and thenext, but the important thing is that, accord-ing to Maslow, until your physiological needsare satisfied, you can’t even worry about se-curity or social needs, let alone “self-actualiz-ation,” which is when you start to, like, makeart and think about morality and quantumphysics and stuff.

According to Maslow, I was stuck on thesecond level of the pyramid, unable to feelsecure in my health and therefore unable toreach for love and respect and art andwhatever else, which is, of course, utterhorseshit: The urge to make art or contem-plate philosophy does not go away when youare sick. Those urges just become trans-figured by illness.

Maslow’s pyramid seemed to imply thatI was less human than other people, andmost people seemed to agree with him. But

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not Augustus. I always thought he could loveme because he’d once been sick. Only nowdid it occur to me that maybe he still was.

We arrived in my room, the Kierkegaard. Isat down on the bed expecting him to joinme, but he hunkered down in the dusty pais-ley chair. That chair. How old was it? Fiftyyears?

I felt the ball in the base of my throathardening as I watched him pull a cigarettefrom his pack and stick it between his lips.He leaned back and sighed. “Just before youwent into the ICU, I started to feel this achein my hip.”

“No,” I said. Panic rolled in, pulled meunder.

He nodded. “So I went in for a PETscan.” He stopped. He yanked the cigaretteout of his mouth and clenched his teeth.

Much of my life had been devoted to try-ing not to cry in front of people who loved

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me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. Youclench your teeth. You look up. You tell your-self that if they see you cry, it will hurt them,and you will be nothing but A Sadness intheir lives, and you must not become a meresadness, so you will not cry, and you say allof this to yourself while looking up at theceiling, and then you swallow even thoughyour throat does not want to close and youlook at the person who loves you and smile.

He flashed his crooked smile, then said,“I lit up like a Christmas tree, Hazel Grace.The lining of my chest, my left hip, my liver,everywhere.”

Everywhere. That word hung in the airawhile. We both knew what it meant. I gotup, dragging my body and the cart acrosscarpet that was older than Augustus wouldever be, and I knelt at the base of the chairand put my head in his lap and hugged himby the waist.

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He was stroking my hair. “I’m so sorry,”I said.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he said, hisvoice calm. “Your mom must know. The wayshe looked at me. My mom must’ve just toldher or something. I should’ve told you. It wasstupid. Selfish.”

I knew why he hadn’t said anything, ofcourse: the same reason I hadn’t wanted himto see me in the ICU. I couldn’t be mad athim for even a moment, and only now that Iloved a grenade did I understand the foolish-ness of trying to save others from my ownimpending fragmentation: I couldn’t unloveAugustus Waters. And I didn’t want to.

“It’s not fair,” I said. “It’s just so god-damned unfair.”

“The world,” he said, “is not a wish-granting factory,” and then he broke down,just for one moment, his sob roaring impot-ent like a clap of thunder unaccompanied bylightning, the terrible ferocity that amateurs

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in the field of suffering might mistake forweakness. Then he pulled me to him and, hisface inches from mine, resolved, “I’ll fight it.I’ll fight it for you. Don’t you worry aboutme, Hazel Grace. I’m okay. I’ll find a way tohang around and annoy you for a long time.”

I was crying. But even then he wasstrong, holding me tight so that I could seethe sinewy muscles of his arms wrappedaround me as he said, “I’m sorry. You’ll beokay. It’ll be okay. I promise,” and smiled hiscrooked smile.

He kissed my forehead, and then I felthis powerful chest deflate just a little. “Iguess I had a hamartia after all.”

After a while, I pulled him over to the bedand we lay there together as he told methey’d started palliative chemo, but he gave itup to go to Amsterdam, even though his par-ents were furious. They’d tried to stop himright up until that morning, when I heard

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him screaming that his body belonged tohim. “We could have rescheduled,” I said.

“No, we couldn’t have,” he answered.“Anyway, it wasn’t working. I could tell itwasn’t working, you know?”

I nodded. “It’s just bullshit, the wholething,” I said.

“They’ll try something else when I gethome. They’ve always got a new idea.”

“Yeah,” I said, having been the experi-mental pincushion myself.

“I kind of conned you into believing youwere falling in love with a healthy person,”he said.

I shrugged. “I’d have done the same toyou.”

“No, you wouldn’t’ve, but we can’t all beas awesome as you.” He kissed me, thengrimaced.

“Does it hurt?” I asked.“No. Just.” He stared at the ceiling for a

long time before saying, “I like this world. I

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like drinking champagne. I like not smoking.I like the sound of Dutch people speakingDutch. And now . . . I don’t even get a battle.I don’t get a fight.”

“You get to battle cancer,” I said. “Thatis your battle. And you’ll keep fighting,” Itold him. I hated it when people tried tobuild me up to prepare for battle, but I did itto him, anyway. “You’ll . . . you’ll . . . live yourbest life today. This is your war now.” I des-pised myself for the cheesy sentiment, butwhat else did I have?

“Some war,” he said dismissively. “Whatam I at war with? My cancer. And what is mycancer? My cancer is me. The tumors aremade of me. They’re made of me as surely asmy brain and my heart are made of me. It isa civil war, Hazel Grace, with a predeter-mined winner.”

“Gus,” I said. I couldn’t say anythingelse. He was too smart for the kinds of solaceI could offer.

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“Okay,” he said. But it wasn’t. After amoment, he said, “If you go to the Rijksmu-seum, which I really wanted to do—but whoare we kidding, neither of us can walkthrough a museum. But anyway, I looked atthe collection online before we left. If youwere to go, and hopefully someday you will,you would see a lot of paintings of deadpeople. You’d see Jesus on the cross, andyou’d see a dude getting stabbed in the neck,and you’d see people dying at sea and inbattle and a parade of martyrs. But Not. One.Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting it fromthe plague or smallpox or yellow fever orwhatever, because there is no glory in illness.There is no meaning to it. There is no honorin dying of.”

Abraham Maslow, I present to youAugustus Waters, whose existential curiositydwarfed that of his well-fed, well-loved,healthy brethren. While the mass of menwent on leading thoroughly unexamined

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lives of monstrous consumption, AugustusWaters examined the collection of the Rijks-museum from afar.

“What?” Augustus asked after a while.“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just . . .” I

couldn’t finish the sentence, didn’t knowhow to. “I’m just very, very fond of you.”

He smiled with half his mouth, his noseinches from mine. “The feeling is mutual. Idon’t suppose you can forget about it andtreat me like I’m not dying.”

“I don’t think you’re dying,” I said. “Ithink you’ve just got a touch of cancer.”

He smiled. Gallows humor. “I’m on aroller coaster that only goes up,” he said.

“And it is my privilege and my respons-ibility to ride all the way up with you,” I said.

“Would it be absolutely ludicrous to tryto make out?”

“There is no try,” I said. “There is onlydo.”

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CHAPTERFOURTEEN

On the flight home, twenty thousand feetabove clouds that were ten thousand feetabove the ground, Gus said, “I used to thinkit would be fun to live on a cloud.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Like it would be like oneof those inflatable moonwalk machines, ex-cept for always.”

“But then in middle school science, Mr.Martinez asked who among us had ever fan-tasized about living in the clouds, and

everyone raised their hand. Then Mr.Martinez told us that up in the clouds thewind blew one hundred and fifty miles anhour and the temperature was thirty belowzero and there was no oxygen and we’d alldie within seconds.”

“Sounds like a nice guy.”“He specialized in the murder of

dreams, Hazel Grace, let me tell you. Youthink volcanoes are awesome? Tell that tothe ten thousand screaming corpses at Pom-peii. You still secretly believe that there is anelement of magic to this world? It’s all justsoulless molecules bouncing against eachother randomly. Do you worry about whowill take care of you if your parents die? Aswell you should, because they will be wormfood in the fullness of time.”

“Ignorance is bliss,” I said.A flight attendant walked through the

aisle with a beverage cart, half whispering,“Drinks? Drinks? Drinks? Drinks?” Gus

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leaned over me, raising his hand. “Could wehave some champagne, please?”

“You’re twenty-one?” she asked dubi-ously. I conspicuously rearranged the nub-bins in my nose. The stewardess smiled, thenglanced down at my sleeping mother. “Shewon’t mind?” she asked of Mom.

“Nah,” I said.So she poured champagne into two

plastic cups. Cancer Perks.Gus and I toasted. “To you,” he said.“To you,” I said, touching my cup to his.We sipped. Dimmer stars than we’d had

at Oranjee, but still good enough to drink.“You know,” Gus said to me, “everything

Van Houten said was true.”“Maybe, but he didn’t have to be such a

douche about it. I can’t believe he imagined afuture for Sisyphus the Hamster but not forAnna’s mom.”

Augustus shrugged. He seemed to zoneout all of a sudden. “Okay?” I asked.

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He shook his head microscopically.“Hurts,” he said.

“Chest?”He nodded. Fists clenched. Later, he

would describe it as a one-legged fat manwearing a stiletto heel standing on themiddle of his chest. I returned my seat-backtray to its upright and locked position andbent forward to dig pills out of his backpack.He swallowed one with champagne. “Okay?”I asked again.

Gus sat there, pumping his fist, waitingfor the medicine to work, the medicine thatdid not kill the pain so much as distance himfrom it (and from me).

“It was like it was personal,” Gus saidquietly. “Like he was mad at us for somereason. Van Houten, I mean.” He drank therest of his champagne in a quick series ofgulps and soon fell asleep.

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My dad was waiting for us in baggage claim,standing amid all the limo drivers in suitsholding signs printed with the last names oftheir passengers: JOHNSON, BARRINGTON,

CARMICHAEL. Dad had a sign of his own. MY

BEAUTIFUL FAMILY, it read, and then under-neath that (AND GUS).

I hugged him, and he started crying (ofcourse). As we drove home, Gus and I toldDad stories of Amsterdam, but it wasn’t untilI was home and hooked up to Philip watch-ing good ol’ American television with Dadand eating American pizza off napkins onour laps that I told him about Gus.

“Gus had a recurrence,” I said.“I know,” he said. He scooted over to-

ward me, and then added, “His mom told usbefore the trip. I’m sorry he kept it from you.I’m . . . I’m sorry, Hazel.” I didn’t say any-thing for a long time. The show we werewatching was about people who are trying topick which house they are going to buy. “So I

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read An Imperial Affliction while you guyswere gone,” Dad said.

I turned my head up to him. “Oh, cool.What’d you think?”

“It was good. A little over my head. I wasa biochemistry major, remember, not a liter-ature guy. I do wish it had ended.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Common complaint.”“Also, it was a bit hopeless,” he said. “A

bit defeatist.”“If by defeatist you mean honest, then I

agree.”“I don’t think defeatism is honest,” Dad

answered. “I refuse to accept that.”“So everything happens for a reason and

we’ll all go live in the clouds and play harpsand live in mansions?”

Dad smiled. He put a big arm aroundme and pulled me to him, kissing the side ofmy head. “I don’t know what I believe, Hazel.I thought being an adult meant knowing

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what you believe, but that has not been myexperience.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”He told me again that he was sorry

about Gus, and then we went back to watch-ing the show, and the people picked a house,and Dad still had his arm around me, and Iwas kinda starting to fall asleep, but I didn’twant to go to bed, and then Dad said, “Youknow what I believe? I remember in college Iwas taking this math class, this really greatmath class taught by this tiny old woman.She was talking about fast Fourier trans-forms and she stopped midsentence andsaid, ‘Sometimes it seems the universe wantsto be noticed.’

“That’s what I believe. I believe the uni-verse wants to be noticed. I think the uni-verse is improbably biased toward con-sciousness, that it rewards intelligence inpart because the universe enjoys its elegancebeing observed. And who am I, living in the

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middle of history, to tell the universe thatit—or my observation of it—is temporary?”

“You are fairly smart,” I said after awhile.

“You are fairly good at compliments,” heanswered.

The next afternoon, I drove over to Gus’shouse and ate peanut-butter-and-jelly sand-wiches with his parents and told them storiesabout Amsterdam while Gus napped on theliving room couch, where we’d watched V forVendetta. I could just see him from the kit-chen: He lay on his back, head turned awayfrom me, a PICC line already in. They wereattacking the cancer with a new cocktail: twochemo drugs and a protein receptor that theyhoped would turn off the oncogene in Gus’scancer. He was lucky to get enrolled in thetrial, they told me. Lucky. I knew one of thedrugs. Hearing the sound of its name mademe want to barf.

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After a while, Isaac’s mom brought himover.

“Isaac, hi, it’s Hazel from SupportGroup, not your evil ex-girlfriend.” His momwalked him to me, and I pulled myself out ofthe dining room chair and hugged him, hisbody taking a moment to find me before hehugged me back, hard.

“How was Amsterdam?” he asked.“Awesome,” I said.“Waters,” he said. “Where are ya, bro?”“He’s napping,” I said, and my voice

caught. Isaac shook his head, everyone quiet.“Sucks,” Isaac said after a second. His

mom walked him to a chair she’d pulled out.He sat.

“I can still dominate your blind ass atCounterinsurgence,” Augustus said withoutturning toward us. The medicine slowed hisspeech a bit, but only to the speed of regularpeople.

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“I’m pretty sure all asses are blind,”Isaac answered, reaching his hands into theair vaguely, looking for his mom. Shegrabbed him, pulled him up, and theywalked over to the couch, where Gus andIsaac hugged awkwardly. “How are you feel-ing?” Isaac asked.

“Everything tastes like pennies. Asidefrom that, I’m on a roller coaster that onlygoes up, kid,” Gus answered. Isaac laughed.“How are the eyes?”

“Oh, excellent,” he said. “I mean, they’renot in my head is the only problem.”

“Awesome, yeah,” Gus said. “Not to one-up you or anything, but my body is made outof cancer.”

“So I heard,” Isaac said, trying not to letit get to him. He fumbled toward Gus’s handand found only his thigh.

“I’m taken,” Gus said.

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Isaac’s mom brought over two dining roomchairs, and Isaac and I sat down next to Gus.I took Gus’s hand, stroking circles aroundthe space between his thumb and forefinger.

The adults headed down to the base-ment to commiserate or whatever, leavingthe three of us alone in the living room. Aftera while, Augustus turned his head to us, thewaking up slow. “How’s Monica?” he asked.

“Haven’t heard from her once,” Isaacsaid. “No cards; no emails. I got this machinethat reads me my emails. It’s awesome. I canchange the voice’s gender or accent orwhatever.”

“So I can like send you a porn story andyou can have an old German man read it toyou?”

“Exactly,” Isaac said. “Although Momstill has to help me with it, so maybe hold offon the German porno for a week or two.”

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“She hasn’t even, like, texted you to askhow you’re doing?” I asked. This struck meas an unfathomable injustice.

“Total radio silence,” Isaac said.“Ridiculous,” I said.“I’ve stopped thinking about it. I don’t

have time to have a girlfriend. I have like afull-time job Learning How to Be Blind.”

Gus turned his head back away from us,staring out the window at the patio in hisbackyard. His eyes closed.

Isaac asked how I was doing, and I said Iwas good, and he told me there was a newgirl in Support Group with a really hot voiceand he needed me to go to tell him if she wasactually hot. Then out of nowhere Augustussaid, “You can’t just not contact your formerboyfriend after his eyes get cut out of hisfreaking head.”

“Just one of—” Isaac started.“Hazel Grace, do you have four dollars?”

asked Gus.

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“Um,” I said. “Yes?”“Excellent. You’ll find my leg under the

coffee table,” he said. Gus pushed himselfupright and scooted down to the edge of thecouch. I handed him the prosthetic; hefastened it in slow motion.

I helped him to stand and then offeredmy arm to Isaac, guiding him past furniturethat suddenly seemed intrusive, realizingthat, for the first time in years, I was thehealthiest person in the room.

I drove. Augustus rode shotgun. Isaacsat in the back. We stopped at a grocerystore, where, per Augustus’s instruction, Ibought a dozen eggs while he and Isaacwaited in the car. And then Isaac guided usby his memory to Monica’s house, an ag-gressively sterile, two-story house near theJCC. Monica’s bright green 1990s PontiacFirebird sat fat-wheeled in the driveway.

“Is it there?” Isaac asked when he feltme coming to a stop.

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“Oh, it’s there,” Augustus said. “Youknow what it looks like, Isaac? It looks likeall the hopes we were foolish to hope.”

“So she’s inside?”Gus turned his head around slowly to

look at Isaac. “Who cares where she is? Thisis not about her. This is about you.” Gusgripped the egg carton in his lap, thenopened the door and pulled his legs out ontothe street. He opened the door for Isaac, andI watched through the mirror as Gus helpedIsaac out of the car, the two of them leaningon each other at the shoulder then taperingaway, like praying hands that don’t quitemeet at the palms.

I rolled down the windows and watchedfrom the car, because vandalism made menervous. They took a few steps toward thecar, then Gus flipped open the egg cartonand handed Isaac an egg. Isaac tossed it,missing the car by a solid forty feet.

“A little to the left,” Gus said.

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“My throw was a little to the left or Ineed to aim a little to the left?”

“Aim left.” Isaac swiveled his shoulders.“Lefter,” Gus said. Isaac swiveled again. “Yes.Excellent. And throw hard.” Gus handed himanother egg, and Isaac hurled it, the eggarcing over the car and smashing against theslow-sloping roof of the house. “Bull’s-eye!”Gus said.

“Really?” Isaac asked excitedly.“No, you threw it like twenty feet over

the car. Just, throw hard, but keep it low.And a little right of where you were lasttime.” Isaac reached over and found an egghimself from the carton Gus cradled. Hetossed it, hitting a taillight. “Yes!” Gus said.“Yes! TAILLIGHT!”

Isaac reached for another egg, missedwide right, then another, missing low, thenanother, hitting the back windshield. Hethen nailed three in a row against the trunk.“Hazel Grace,” Gus shouted back to me.

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“Take a picture of this so Isaac can see itwhen they invent robot eyes.” I pulled myselfup so I was sitting in the rolled-down win-dow, my elbows on the roof of the car, andsnapped a picture with my phone: Augustus,an unlit cigarette in his mouth, his smile de-liciously crooked, holds the mostly emptypink egg carton above his head. His otherhand is draped around Isaac’s shoulder,whose sunglasses are turned not quite to-ward the camera. Behind them, egg yolksdrip down the windshield and bumper of thegreen Firebird. And behind that, a door isopening.

“What,” asked the middle-aged woman amoment after I’d snapped the picture, “inGod’s name—” and then she stopped talking.

“Ma’am,” Augustus said, nodding to-ward her, “your daughter’s car has just beendeservedly egged by a blind man. Pleaseclose the door and go back inside or we’ll beforced to call the police.” After wavering for a

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moment, Monica’s mom closed the door anddisappeared. Isaac threw the last three eggsin quick succession and Gus then guided himback toward the car. “See, Isaac, if you justtake—we’re coming to the curb now—thefeeling of legitimacy away from them, if youturn it around so they feel like they are com-mitting a crime by watching—a few moresteps—their cars get egged, they’ll be con-fused and scared and worried and they’ll justreturn to their—you’ll find the door handledirectly in front of you—quietly desperatelives.” Gus hurried around the front of thecar and installed himself in the shotgun seat.The doors closed, and I roared off, drivingfor several hundred feet before I realized Iwas headed down a dead-end street. I circledthe cul-de-sac and raced back past Monica’shouse.

I never took another picture of him.

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A few days later, at Gus’s house, his par-ents and my parents and Gus and me allsqueezed around the dining room table, eat-ing stuffed peppers on a tablecloth that had,according to Gus’s dad, last seen use in theprevious century.

My dad: “Emily, this risotto . . .”My mom: “It’s just delicious.”Gus’s mom: “Oh, thanks. I’d be happy to

give you the recipe.”Gus, swallowing a bite: “You know, the

primary taste I’m getting is not-Oranjee.”

Me: “Good observation, Gus. This food,while delicious, does not taste like Oranjee.”

My mom: “Hazel.”Gus: “It tastes like . . .”Me: “Food.”Gus: “Yes, precisely. It tastes like food,

excellently prepared. But it does not taste,how do I put this delicately . . . ?”

Me: “It does not taste like God Himselfcooked heaven into a series of five disheswhich were then served to you accompaniedby several luminous balls of fermented, bub-bly plasma while actual and literal flowerpetals floated down all around your canal-side dinner table.”

Gus: “Nicely phrased.”Gus’s father: “Our children are weird.”My dad: “Nicely phrased.”

A week after our dinner, Gus ended up in theER with chest pain, and they admitted himovernight, so I drove over to Memorial the

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next morning and visited him on the fourthfloor. I hadn’t been to Memorial since visit-ing Isaac. It didn’t have any of the cloyinglybright primary color–painted walls or theframed paintings of dogs driving cars thatone found at Children’s, but the absolutesterility of the place made me nostalgic forthe happy-kid bullshit at Children’s. Me-morial was so functional. It was a storage fa-cility. A prematorium.

When the elevator doors opened on thefourth floor, I saw Gus’s mom pacing in thewaiting room, talking on a cell phone. Shehung up quickly, then hugged me andoffered to take my cart.

“I’m okay,” I said. “How’s Gus?”“He had a tough night, Hazel,” she said.

“His heart is working too hard. He needs toscale back on activity. Wheelchairs from hereon out. They’re putting him on some newmedicine that should be better for the pain.His sisters just drove in.”

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“Okay,” I said. “Can I see him?”She put her arm around me and

squeezed my shoulder. It felt weird. “Youknow we love you, Hazel, but right now wejust need to be a family. Gus agrees withthat. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.“I’ll tell him you visited.”“Okay,” I said. “I’m just gonna read here

for a while, I think.”

She went down the hall, back to where hewas. I understood, but I still missed him, stillthought maybe I was missing my last chanceto see him, to say good-bye or whatever. Thewaiting room was all brown carpet andbrown overstuffed cloth chairs. I sat in a loveseat for a while, my oxygen cart tucked bymy feet. I’d worn my Chuck Taylors and myCeci n’est pas une pipe shirt, the exact outfitI’d been wearing two weeks before on theLate Afternoon of the Venn Diagram, and he

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wouldn’t see it. I started scrolling throughthe pictures on my phone, a backward flip-book of the last few months, beginning withhim and Isaac outside of Monica’s house andending with the first picture I’d taken of him,on the drive to Funky Bones. It seemed likeforever ago, like we’d had this brief but stillinfinite forever. Some infinities are biggerthan other infinities.

* * *

Two weeks later, I wheeled Gus across theart park toward Funky Bones with one entirebottle of very expensive champagne and myoxygen tank in his lap. The champagne hadbeen donated by one of Gus’s doctors—Gusbeing the kind of person who inspires doc-tors to give their best bottles of champagneto children. We sat, Gus in his chair and meon the damp grass, as near to Funky Bonesas we could get him in the chair. I pointed atthe little kids goading each other to jump

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from rib cage to shoulder and Gus answeredjust loud enough for me to hear over the din,“Last time, I imagined myself as the kid. Thistime, the skeleton.”

We drank from paper Winnie-the-Poohcups.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A typical day with late-stage Gus:I went over to his house about noon,

after he had eaten and puked up breakfast.He met me at the door in his wheelchair, nolonger the muscular, gorgeous boy whostared at me at Support Group, but still halfsmiling, still smoking his unlit cigarette, hisblue eyes bright and alive.

We ate lunch with his parents at the din-ing room table. Peanut-butter-and-jellysandwiches and last night’s asparagus. Gusdidn’t eat. I asked how he was feeling.

“Grand,” he said. “And you?”“Good. What’d you do last night?”“I slept quite a lot. I want to write you a

sequel, Hazel Grace, but I’m just so damnedtired all the time.”

“You can just tell it to me,” I said.“Well, I stand by my pre–Van Houten

analysis of the Dutch Tulip Man. Not a conman, but not as rich as he was letting on.”

“And what about Anna’s mom?”“Haven’t settled on an opinion there.

Patience, Grasshopper.” Augustus smiled.His parents were quiet, watching him, neverlooking away, like they just wanted to enjoyThe Gus Waters Show while it was still intown. “Sometimes I dream that I’m writing amemoir. A memoir would be just the thing tokeep me in the hearts and memories of myadoring public.”

“Why do you need an adoring publicwhen you’ve got me?” I asked.

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“Hazel Grace, when you’re as charmingand physically attractive as myself, it’s easyenough to win over people you meet. But get-ting strangers to love you . . . now, that’s thetrick.”

I rolled my eyes.

After lunch, we went outside to the backyard.He was still well enough to push his ownwheelchair, pulling miniature wheelies to getthe front wheels over the bump in the door-way. Still athletic, in spite of it all, blessedwith balance and quick reflexes that even theabundant narcotics could not fully mask.

His parents stayed inside, but when Iglanced back into the dining room, they werealways watching us.

We sat out there in silence for a minuteand then Gus said, “I wish we had that swingset sometimes.”

“The one from my backyard?”

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“Yeah. My nostalgia is so extreme that Iam capable of missing a swing my butt neveractually touched.”

“Nostalgia is a side effect of cancer,” Itold him.

“Nah, nostalgia is a side effect of dying,”he answered. Above us, the wind blew andthe branching shadows rearranged them-selves on our skin. Gus squeezed my hand.“It is a good life, Hazel Grace.”

We went inside when he needed meds, whichwere pressed into him along with liquid nu-trition through his G-tube, a bit of plasticthat disappeared into his belly. He was quietfor a while, zoned out. His mom wanted himto take a nap, but he kept shaking his headno when she suggested it, so we just let himsit there half asleep in the chair for a while.

His parents watched an old video of Guswith his sisters—they were probably my ageand Gus was about five. They were playing

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basketball in the driveway of a differenthouse, and even though Gus was tiny, hecould dribble like he’d been born doing it,running circles around his sisters as theylaughed. It was the first time I’d even seenhim play basketball. “He was good,” I said.

“Should’ve seen him in high school,” hisdad said. “Started varsity as a freshman.”

Gus mumbled, “Can I go downstairs?”His mom and dad wheeled the chair

downstairs with Gus still in it, bouncingdown crazily in a way that would have beendangerous if danger retained its relevance,and then they left us alone. He got into bedand we lay there together under the covers,me on my side and Gus on his back, my headon his bony shoulder, his heat radiatingthrough his polo shirt and into my skin, myfeet tangled with his real foot, my hand onhis cheek.

When I got his face nose-touchinglyclose so that I could only see his eyes, I

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couldn’t tell he was sick. We kissed for awhile and then lay together listening to TheHectic Glow’s eponymous album, and even-tually we fell asleep like that, a quantum en-tanglement of tubes and bodies.

We woke up later and arranged an armada ofpillows so that we could sit comfortablyagainst the edge of the bed and played Coun-terinsurgence 2: The Price of Dawn. I suckedat it, of course, but my sucking was useful tohim: It made it easier for him to die beauti-fully, to jump in front of a sniper’s bullet andsacrifice himself for me, or else to kill a sen-try who was just about to shoot me. How hereveled in saving me. He shouted, “You willnot kill my girlfriend today, InternationalTerrorist of Ambiguous Nationality!”

It crossed my mind to fake a choking in-cident or something so that he might give methe Heimlich. Maybe then he could rid him-self of this fear that his life had been lived

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and lost for no greater good. But then I ima-gined him being physically unable to Heim-lich, and me having to reveal that it was all aruse, and the ensuing mutual humiliation.

It’s hard as hell to hold on to your dig-nity when the risen sun is too bright in yourlosing eyes, and that’s what I was thinkingabout as we hunted for bad guys through theruins of a city that didn’t exist.

Finally, his dad came down and draggedGus back upstairs, and in the entryway, be-neath an Encouragement telling me thatFriends Are Forever, I knelt to kiss him goodnight. I went home and ate dinner with myparents, leaving Gus to eat (and puke up) hisown dinner.

After some TV, I went to sleep.I woke up.Around noon, I went over there again.

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CHAPTERSEVENTEEN

One morning, a month after returninghome from Amsterdam, I drove over to hishouse. His parents told me he was still sleep-ing downstairs, so I knocked loudly on thebasement door before entering, then asked,“Gus?”

I found him mumbling in a language ofhis own creation. He’d pissed the bed. It wasawful. I couldn’t even look, really. I justshouted for his parents and they came down,

and I went upstairs while they cleaned himup.

When I came back down, he was slowlywaking up out of the narcotics to the excruci-ating day. I arranged his pillows so we couldplay Counterinsurgence on the bare sheetlessmattress, but he was so tired and out of itthat he sucked almost as bad as I did, and wecouldn’t go five minutes without both gettingdead. Not fancy heroic deaths either, justcareless ones.

I didn’t really say anything to him. I al-most wanted him to forget I was there, Iguess, and I was hoping he didn’t rememberthat I’d found the boy I love deranged in awide pool of his own piss. I kept kind of hop-ing that he’d look over at me and say, “Oh,Hazel Grace. How’d you get here?”

But unfortunately, he remembered.“With each passing minute, I’m developing adeeper appreciation of the word mortified,”he said finally.

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“I’ve pissed the bed, Gus, believe me. It’sno big deal.”

“You used,” he said, and then took asharp breath, “to call me Augustus.”

“You know,” he said after a while, “it’s kids’stuff, but I always thought my obituarywould be in all the newspapers, that I’d havea story worth telling. I always had this secretsuspicion that I was special.”

“You are,” I said.“You know what I mean, though,” he

said.I did know what he meant. I just didn’t

agree. “I don’t care if the New York Timeswrites an obituary for me. I just want you towrite one,” I told him. “You say you’re notspecial because the world doesn’t knowabout you, but that’s an insult to me. I knowabout you.”

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“I don’t think I’m gonna make it to writeyour obituary,” he said, instead ofapologizing.

I was so frustrated with him. “I justwant to be enough for you, but I never canbe. This can never be enough for you. Butthis is all you get. You get me, and your fam-ily, and this world. This is your life. I’m sorryif it sucks. But you’re not going to be the firstman on Mars, and you’re not going to be anNBA star, and you’re not going to huntNazis. I mean, look at yourself, Gus.” Hedidn’t respond. “I don’t mean—” I started.

“Oh, you meant it,” he interrupted. Istarted to apologize and he said, “No, I’msorry. You’re right. Let’s just play.”

So we just played.

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CHAPTEREIGHTEEN

I woke up to my phone singing a song byThe Hectic Glow. Gus’s favorite. That meanthe was calling—or someone was calling fromhis phone. I glanced at the alarm clock: 2:35A.M. He’s gone, I thought as everything insideof me collapsed into a singularity.

I could barely creak out a “Hello?”I waited for the sound of a parent’s anni-

hilated voice.“Hazel Grace,” Augustus said weakly.

“Oh, thank God it’s you. Hi. Hi, I loveyou.”

“Hazel Grace, I’m at the gas station. So-mething’s wrong. You gotta help me.”

“What? Where are you?”“The Speedway at Eighty-sixth and

Ditch. I did something wrong with the G-tube and I can’t figure it out and—”

“I’m calling nine-one-one,” I said.“No no no no no, they’ll take me to a

hospital. Hazel, listen to me. Do not callnine-one-one or my parents I will never for-give you don’t please just come please justcome and fix my goddamned G-tube. I’mjust, God, this is the stupidest thing. I don’twant my parents to know I’m gone. Please. Ihave the medicine with me; I just can’t get itin. Please.” He was crying. I’d never heardhim sob like this except from outside hishouse before Amsterdam.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m leaving now.”

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I took the BiPAP off and connected my-self to an oxygen tank, lifted the tank into mycart, and put on sneakers to go with my pinkcotton pajama pants and a Butler basketballT-shirt, which had originally been Gus’s. Igrabbed the keys from the kitchen drawerwhere Mom kept them and wrote a note incase they woke up while I was gone.

Went to check on Gus. It’s important.Sorry.Love, H

As I drove the couple miles to the gas station,I woke up enough to wonder why Gus hadleft the house in the middle of the night.Maybe he’d been hallucinating, or his mar-tyrdom fantasies had gotten the better ofhim.

I sped up Ditch Road past flashing yel-low lights, going too fast partly to reach himand partly in the hopes a cop would pull me

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over and give me an excuse to tell someonethat my dying boyfriend was stuck outside ofa gas station with a malfunctioning G-tube.But no cop showed up to make my decisionfor me.

There were only two cars in the lot. I pulledup next to his. I opened the door. The interi-or lights came on. Augustus sat in thedriver’s seat, covered in his own vomit, hishands pressed to his belly where the G-tubewent in. “Hi,” he mumbled.

“Oh, God, Augustus, we have to get youto a hospital.”

“Please just look at it.” I gagged from thesmell but bent forward to inspect the placeabove his belly button where they’d surgic-ally installed the tube. The skin of his abdo-men was warm and bright red.

“Gus, I think something’s infected. Ican’t fix this. Why are you here? Why aren’tyou at home?” He puked, without even the

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energy to turn his mouth away from his lap.“Oh, sweetie,” I said.

“I wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes,” hemumbled. “I lost my pack. Or they took itaway from me. I don’t know. They saidthey’d get me another one, but I wanted . . .to do it myself. Do one little thing myself.”

He was staring straight ahead. Quietly, Ipulled out my phone and glanced down todial 911.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. Nine-one-one,what is your emergency? “Hi, I’m at theSpeedway at Eighty-sixth and Ditch, and Ineed an ambulance. The great love of my lifehas a malfunctioning G-tube.”

He looked up at me. It was horrible. I couldhardly look at him. The Augustus Waters ofthe crooked smiles and unsmoked cigaretteswas gone, replaced by this desperate humili-ated creature sitting there beneath me.

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“This is it. I can’t even not smokeanymore.”

“Gus, I love you.”“Where is my chance to be somebody’s

Peter Van Houten?” He hit the steeringwheel weakly, the car honking as he cried.He leaned his head back, looking up. “I hatemyself I hate myself I hate this I hate this Idisgust myself I hate it I hate it I hate it justlet me fucking die.”

According to the conventions of thegenre, Augustus Waters kept his sense of hu-mor till the end, did not for a moment waiverin his courage, and his spirit soared like anindomitable eagle until the world itself couldnot contain his joyous soul.

But this was the truth, a pitiful boy whodesperately wanted not to be pitiful, scream-ing and crying, poisoned by an infected G-tube that kept him alive, but not aliveenough.

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I wiped his chin and grabbed his face inmy hands and knelt down close to him sothat I could see his eyes, which still lived.“I’m sorry. I wish it was like that movie, withthe Persians and the Spartans.”

“Me too,” he said.“But it isn’t,” I said.“I know,” he said.“There are no bad guys.”“Yeah.”“Even cancer isn’t a bad guy really: Can-

cer just wants to be alive.”“Yeah.”“You’re okay,” I told him. I could hear

the sirens.“Okay,” he said. He was losing

consciousness.“Gus, you have to promise not to try this

again. I’ll get you cigarettes, okay?” Helooked at me. His eyes swam in their sockets.“You have to promise.”

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He nodded a little and then his eyesclosed, his head swiveling on his neck.

“Gus,” I said. “Stay with me.”“Read me something,” he said as the

goddamned ambulance roared right past us.So while I waited for them to turn aroundand find us, I recited the only poem I couldbring to mind, “The Red Wheelbarrow” byWilliam Carlos Williams.

so much dependsupona red wheelbarrow

glazed with rainwater

beside the whitechickens.

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Williams was a doctor. It seemed to melike a doctor’s poem. The poem was over, butthe ambulance was still driving away fromus, so I kept writing it.

* * *

And so much depends, I told Augustus, upona blue sky cut open by the branches of thetrees above. So much depends upon thetransparent G-tube erupting from the gut ofthe blue-lipped boy. So much depends uponthis observer of the universe.

Half conscious, he glanced over at meand mumbled, “And you say you don’t writepoetry.”

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CHAPTERNINETEEN

He came home from the hospital a fewdays later, finally and irrevocably robbed ofhis ambitions. It took more medication to re-move him from the pain. He moved upstairspermanently, into a hospital bed near the liv-ing room window.

These were days of pajamas and beardscruff, of mumblings and requests and himendlessly thanking everyone for all they weredoing on his behalf. One afternoon, he

pointed vaguely toward a laundry basket in acorner of the room and asked me, “What’sthat?”

“That laundry basket?”“No, next to it.”“I don’t see anything next to it.”“It’s my last shred of dignity. It’s very

small.”

* * *

The next day, I let myself in. They didn’t likeme to ring the doorbell anymore because itmight wake him up. His sisters were therewith their banker husbands and three kids,all boys, who ran up to me and chanted whoare you who are you who are you, runningcircles around the entryway like lung capa-city was a renewable resource. I’d met thesisters before, but never the kids or theirdads.

“I’m Hazel,” I said.

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“Gus has a girlfriend,” one of the kidssaid.

“I am aware that Gus has a girlfriend,” Isaid.

“She’s got boobies,” another said.“Is that so?”“Why do you have that?” the first one

asked, pointing at my oxygen cart.“It helps me breathe,” I said. “Is Gus

awake?”“No, he’s sleeping.”“He’s dying,” said another.“He’s dying,” the third one confirmed,

suddenly serious. It was quiet for a moment,and I wondered what I was supposed to say,but then one of them kicked another andthey were off to the races again, falling allover each other in a scrum that migrated to-ward the kitchen.

I made my way to Gus’s parents in theliving room and met his brothers-in-law,Chris and Dave.

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I hadn’t gotten to know his half sisters,really, but they both hugged me anyway.Julie was sitting on the edge of the bed, talk-ing to a sleeping Gus in precisely the samevoice that one would use to tell an infant hewas adorable, saying, “Oh, Gussy Gussy, ourlittle Gussy Gussy.” Our Gussy? Had they ac-quired him?

“What’s up, Augustus?” I said, trying tomodel appropriate behavior.

“Our beautiful Gussy,” Martha said,leaning in toward him. I began to wonder ifhe was actually asleep or if he’d just laid aheavy finger on the pain pump to avoid theAttack of the Well-Meaning Sisters.

He woke up after a while and the first thinghe said was, “Hazel,” which I have to admitmade me kind of happy, like maybe I waspart of his family, too. “Outside,” he saidquietly. “Can we go?”

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We went, his mom pushing the wheel-chair, sisters and brothers-in-law and dadand nephews and me trailing. It was a cloudyday, still and hot as summer settled in. Hewore a long-sleeve navy T-shirt and fleecesweatpants. He was cold all the time forsome reason. He wanted some water, so hisdad went and got some for him.

Martha tried to engage Gus in conversa-tion, kneeling down next to him and saying,“You’ve always had such beautiful eyes.” Henodded a little.

One of the husbands put an arm onGus’s shoulder and said, “How’s that freshair feel?” Gus shrugged.

“Do you want meds?” his mom asked,joining the circle kneeling around him. I tooka step back, watching as the nephews torethrough a flower bed on their way to the littlepatch of grass in Gus’s backyard. They im-mediately commenced to play a game that

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involved throwing one another to theground.

“Kids!” Julie shouted vaguely.“I can only hope,” Julie said, turning

back to Gus, “they grow into the kind ofthoughtful, intelligent young men you’vebecome.”

I resisted the urge to audibly gag. “He’snot that smart,” I said to Julie.

“She’s right. It’s just that most reallygood-looking people are stupid, so I exceedexpectations.”

“Right, it’s primarily his hotness,” I said.“It can be sort of blinding,” he said.“It actually did blind our friend Isaac,” I

said.“Terrible tragedy, that. But can I help

my own deadly beauty?”“You cannot.”“It is my burden, this beautiful face.”“Not to mention your body.”

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“Seriously, don’t even get me started onmy hot bod. You don’t want to see me naked,Dave. Seeing me naked actually took HazelGrace’s breath away,” he said, nodding to-ward the oxygen tank.

“Okay, enough,” Gus’s dad said, andthen out of nowhere, his dad put an armaround me and kissed the side of my headand whispered, “I thank God for you everyday, kid.”

Anyway, that was the last good day I hadwith Gus until the Last Good Day.

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CHAPTER TWENTY

One of the less bullshitty conventions ofthe cancer kid genre is the Last Good Dayconvention, wherein the victim of cancerfinds herself with some unexpected hourswhen it seems like the inexorable decline hassuddenly plateaued, when the pain is for amoment bearable. The problem, of course, isthat there’s no way of knowing that your lastgood day is your Last Good Day. At the time,it is just another good day.

I’d taken a day off from visiting Augus-tus because I was feeling a bit unwell myself:

nothing specific, just tired. It had been a lazyday, and when Augustus called just after fiveP.M., I was already attached to the BiPAP,which we’d dragged out to the living room soI could watch TV with Mom and Dad.

“Hi, Augustus,” I said.He answered in the voice I’d fallen for.

“Good evening, Hazel Grace. Do you supposeyou could find your way to the Literal Heartof Jesus around eight P.M.?”

“Um, yes?”“Excellent. Also, if it’s not too much

trouble, please prepare a eulogy.”“Um,” I said.“I love you,” he said.“And I you,” I answered. Then the phone

clicked off.“Um,” I said. “I have to go to Support

Group at eight tonight. Emergency session.”My mom muted the TV. “Is everything

okay?”

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I looked at her for a second, my eye-brows raised. “I assume that’s a rhetoricalquestion.”

“But why would there—”“Because Gus needs me for some reason.

It’s fine. I can drive.” I fiddled with theBiPAP so Mom would help me take it off, butshe didn’t. “Hazel,” she said, “your dad and Ifeel like we hardly even see you anymore.”

“Particularly those of us who work allweek,” Dad said.

“He needs me,” I said, finally unfasten-ing the BiPAP myself.

“We need you, too, kiddo,” my dad said.He took hold of my wrist, like I was a two-year-old about to dart out into the street, andgripped it.

“Well, get a terminal disease, Dad, andthen I’ll stay home more.”

“Hazel,” my mom said.“You were the one who didn’t want me

to be a homebody,” I said to her. Dad was

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still clutching my arm. “And now you wanthim to go ahead and die so I’ll be back herechained to this place, letting you take care ofme like I always used to. But I don’t need it,Mom. I don’t need you like I used to. You’rethe one who needs to get a life.”

“Hazel!” Dad said, squeezing harder.“Apologize to your mother.”

I was tugging at my arm but he wouldn’tlet go, and I couldn’t get my cannula on withonly one hand. It was infuriating. All Iwanted was an old-fashioned TeenagerWalkout, wherein I stomp out of the roomand slam the door to my bedroom and turnup The Hectic Glow and furiously write a eu-logy. But I couldn’t because I couldn’t freak-ing breathe. “The cannula,” I whined. “I needit.”

My dad immediately let go and rushedto connect me to the oxygen. I could see theguilt in his eyes, but he was still angry.“Hazel, apologize to your mother.”

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“Fine, I’m sorry, just please let me dothis.”

They didn’t say anything. Mom just satthere with her arms folded, not even lookingat me. After a while, I got up and went to myroom to write about Augustus.

Both Mom and Dad tried a few times toknock on the door or whatever, but I just toldthem I was doing something important. Ittook me forever to figure out what I wantedto say, and even then I wasn’t very happywith it. Before I’d technically finished, I no-ticed it was 7:40, which meant that I wouldbe late even if I didn’t change, so in the end Iwore baby blue cotton pajama pants, flip-flops, and Gus’s Butler shirt.

I walked out of the room and tried to goright past them, but my dad said, “You can’tleave the house without permission.”

“Oh, my God, Dad. He wanted me towrite him a eulogy, okay? I’ll be home every.

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Freaking. Night. Starting any day now,okay?” That finally shut them up.

It took the entire drive to calm down aboutmy parents. I pulled up around the back ofthe church and parked in the semicirculardriveway behind Augustus’s car. The backdoor to the church was held open by a fist-size rock. Inside, I contemplated taking thestairs but decided to wait for the ancientcreaking elevator.

When the elevator doors unscrolled, Iwas in the Support Group room, the chairsarranged in the same circle. But now I sawonly Gus in a wheelchair, ghoulishly thin. Hewas facing me from the center of the circle.He’d been waiting for the elevator doors toopen.

“Hazel Grace,” he said, “you lookravishing.”

“I know, right?”

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I heard a shuffling in a dark corner ofthe room. Isaac stood behind a little woodenlectern, clinging to it. “You want to sit?” Iasked him.

“No, I’m about to eulogize. You’re late.”“You’re . . . I’m . . . what?”Gus gestured for me to sit. I pulled a

chair into the center of the circle with him ashe spun the chair to face Isaac. “I want to at-tend my funeral,” Gus said. “By the way, willyou speak at my funeral?”

“Um, of course, yeah,” I said, letting myhead fall onto his shoulder. I reached acrosshis back and hugged both him and thewheelchair. He winced. I let go.

“Awesome,” he said. “I’m hopeful I’ll getto attend as a ghost, but just to make sure, Ithought I’d—well, not to put you on the spot,but I just this afternoon thought I could ar-range a prefuneral, and I figured since I’m inreasonably good spirits, there’s no time likethe present.”

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“How did you even get in here?” I askedhim.

“Would you believe they leave the dooropen all night?” Gus asked.

“Um, no,” I said.“As well you shouldn’t.” Gus smiled.

“Anyway, I know it’s a bit self-aggrandizing.”“Hey, you’re stealing my eulogy,” Isaac

said. “My first bit is about how you were aself-aggrandizing bastard.”

I laughed.“Okay, okay,” Gus said. “At your

leisure.”Isaac cleared his throat. “Augustus

Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. Butwe forgive him. We forgive him not becausehe had a heart as figuratively good as his lit-eral one sucked, or because he knew moreabout how to hold a cigarette than anynonsmoker in history, or because he goteighteen years when he should have gottenmore.”

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“Seventeen,” Gus corrected.“I’m assuming you’ve got some time,

you interrupting bastard.“I’m telling you,” Isaac continued,

“Augustus Waters talked so much that he’dinterrupt you at his own funeral. And he waspretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kidnever took a piss without pondering theabundant metaphorical resonances of hu-man waste production. And he was vain: I donot believe I have ever met a more physicallyattractive person who was more acutelyaware of his own physical attractiveness.

“But I will say this: When the scientistsof the future show up at my house with roboteyes and they tell me to try them on, I willtell the scientists to screw off, because I donot want to see a world without him.”

I was kind of crying by then.“And then, having made my rhetorical

point, I will put my robot eyes on, because Imean, with robot eyes you can probably see

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through girls’ shirts and stuff. Augustus, myfriend, Godspeed.”

Augustus nodded for a while, his lipspursed, and then gave Isaac a thumbs-up.After he’d recovered his composure, he ad-ded, “I would cut the bit about seeingthrough girls’ shirts.”

Isaac was still clinging to the lectern. Hestarted to cry. He pressed his forehead downto the podium and I watched his shouldersshake, and then finally, he said, “Goddamnit, Augustus, editing your own eulogy.”

“Don’t swear in the Literal Heart of Je-sus,” Gus said.

“Goddamn it,” Isaac said again. Heraised his head and swallowed. “Hazel, can Iget a hand here?”

I’d forgotten he couldn’t make his ownway back to the circle. I got up, placed hishand on my arm, and walked him slowlyback to the chair next to Gus where I’d beensitting. Then I walked up to the podium and

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unfolded the piece of paper on which I’dprinted my eulogy.

“My name is Hazel. Augustus Waterswas the great star-crossed love of my life.Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t beable to get more than a sentence into itwithout disappearing into a puddle of tears.Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you ourlove story, because—like all real love stor-ies—it will die with us, as it should. I’d hopedthat he’d be eulogizing me, because there’sno one I’d rather have . . .” I started crying.“Okay, how not to cry. How am I—okay.Okay.”

I took a few breaths and went back tothe page. “I can’t talk about our love story, soI will talk about math. I am not a mathem-atician, but I know this: There are infinitenumbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12and .112 and an infinite collection of others.Of course, there is a bigger infinite set ofnumbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and

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a million. Some infinities are bigger thanother infinities. A writer we used to liketaught us that. There are days, many ofthem, when I resent the size of my unboun-ded set. I want more numbers than I’m likelyto get, and God, I want more numbers forAugustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, mylove, I cannot tell you how thankful I am forour little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for theworld. You gave me a forever within thenumbered days, and I’m grateful.”

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Augustus Waters died eight days after hisprefuneral, at Memorial, in the ICU, whenthe cancer, which was made of him, finallystopped his heart, which was also made ofhim.

He was with his mom and dad and sis-ters. His mom called me at three thirty in themorning. I’d known, of course, that he wasgoing. I’d talked to his dad before going tobed, and he told me, “It could be tonight,”

but still, when I grabbed the phone from thebedside table and saw Gus’s Mom on thecaller ID, everything inside of me collapsed.She was just crying on the other end of theline, and she told me she was sorry, and Isaid I was sorry, too, and she told me that hewas unconscious for a couple hours before hedied.

My parents came in then, looking ex-pectant, and I just nodded and they fell intoeach other, feeling, I’m sure, the harmonicterror that would in time come for themdirectly.

I called Isaac, who cursed life and theuniverse and God Himself and who saidwhere are the goddamned trophies to breakwhen you need them, and then I realizedthere was no one else to call, which was thesaddest thing. The only person I reallywanted to talk to about Augustus Waters’sdeath was Augustus Waters.

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My parents stayed in my room foreveruntil it was morning and finally Dad said,“Do you want to be alone?” and I nodded andMom said, “We’ll be right outside the door,”me thinking, I don’t doubt it.

It was unbearable. The whole thing. Everysecond worse than the last. I just kept think-ing about calling him, wondering what wouldhappen, if anyone would answer. In the lastweeks, we’d been reduced to spending ourtime together in recollection, but that wasnot nothing: The pleasure of rememberinghad been taken from me, because there wasno longer anyone to remember with. It feltlike losing your co-rememberer meant losingthe memory itself, as if the things we’d donewere less real and important than they hadbeen hours before.

* * *

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When you go into the ER, one of the firstthings they ask you to do is to rate your painon a scale of one to ten, and from there theydecide which drugs to use and how quickly touse them. I’d been asked this question hun-dreds of times over the years, and I remem-ber once early on when I couldn’t get mybreath and it felt like my chest was on fire,flames licking the inside of my ribs fightingfor a way to burn out of my body, my parentstook me to the ER. A nurse asked me aboutthe pain, and I couldn’t even speak, so I heldup nine fingers.

Later, after they’d given me something,the nurse came in and she was kind of strok-ing my hand while she took my blood pres-sure and she said, “You know how I knowyou’re a fighter? You called a ten a nine.”

But that wasn’t quite right. I called it anine because I was saving my ten. And hereit was, the great and terrible ten, slammingme again and again as I lay still and alone in

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my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves toss-ing me against the rocks then pulling meback out to sea so they could launch meagain into the jagged face of the cliff, leavingme floating faceup on the water, undrowned.

Finally I did call him. His phone rangfive times and then went to voice mail.“You’ve reached the voice mail of AugustusWaters,” he said, the clarion voice I’d fallenfor. “Leave a message.” It beeped. The deadair on the line was so eerie. I just wanted togo back to that secret post-terrestrial thirdspace with him that we visited when wetalked on the phone. I waited for that feeling,but it never came: The dead air on the linewas no comfort, and finally I hung up.

I got my laptop out from under the bedand fired it up and went onto his wall page,where already the condolences were floodingin. The most recent one said:

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I love you, bro. See you on the otherside.

. . . Written by someone I’d never heard of.In fact, almost all the wall posts, which ar-rived nearly as fast as I could read them,were written by people I’d never met andwhom he’d never spoken about, people whowere extolling his various virtues now that hewas dead, even though I knew for a fact theyhadn’t seen him in months and had made noeffort to visit him. I wondered if my wallwould look like this if I died, or if I’d beenout of school and life long enough to escapewidespread memorialization.

I kept reading.

I miss you already, bro.

I love you, Augustus. God bless and keepyou.

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You’ll live forever in our hearts, bigman.

(That particularly galled me, because it im-plied the immortality of those left behind:You will live forever in my memory, becauseI will live forever! I AM YOUR GOD NOW,DEAD BOY! I OWN YOU! Thinking youwon’t die is yet another side effect of dying.)

You were always such a great friend I’msorry I didn’t see more of you after youleft school, bro. I bet you’re alreadyplaying ball in heaven.

I imagined the Augustus Waters analysis ofthat comment: If I am playing basketball inheaven, does that imply a physical locationof a heaven containing physical basketballs?Who makes the basketballs in question? Arethere less fortunate souls in heaven whowork in a celestial basketball factory so that I

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can play? Or did an omnipotent God createthe basketballs out of the vacuum of space?Is this heaven in some kind of unobservableuniverse where the laws of physics don’t ap-ply, and if so, why in the hell would I be play-ing basketball when I could be flying or read-ing or looking at beautiful people orsomething else I actually enjoy? It’s almostas if the way you imagine my dead self saysmore about you than it says about either theperson I was or the whatever I am now.

His parents called around noon to say the fu-neral would be in five days, on Saturday. Ipictured a church packed with people whothought he liked basketball, and I wanted topuke, but I knew I had to go, since I wasspeaking and everything. When I hung up, Iwent back to reading his wall:

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Just heard that Gus Waters died after alengthy battle with cancer. Rest inpeace, buddy.

I knew these people were genuinely sad, andthat I wasn’t really mad at them. I was madat the universe. Even so, it infuriated me:You get all these friends just when you don’tneed friends anymore. I wrote a reply to hiscomment:

We live in a universe devoted to the cre-ation, and eradication, of awareness.Augustus Waters did not die after alengthy battle with cancer. He died aftera lengthy battle with human conscious-ness, a victim—as you will be—of theuniverse’s need to make and unmake allthat is possible.

I posted it and waited for someone to reply,refreshing over and over again. Nothing. My

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comment got lost in the blizzard of newposts. Everyone was going to miss him somuch. Everyone was praying for his family. Iremembered Van Houten’s letter: Writingdoes not resurrect. It buries.

* * *

After a while, I went out into the living roomto sit with my parents and watch TV. Icouldn’t tell you what the show was, but atsome point, my mom said, “Hazel, what canwe do for you?”

And I just shook my head. I started cry-ing again.

“What can we do?” Mom asked again.I shrugged.But she kept asking, as if there were

something she could do, until finally I justkind of crawled across the couch into her lapand my dad came over and held my legsreally tight and I wrapped my arms all the

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way around my mom’s middle and they heldon to me for hours while the tide rolled in.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

When we first got there, I sat in the backof the visitation room, a little room of ex-posed stone walls off to the side of the sanc-tuary in the Literal Heart of Jesus church.There were maybe eighty chairs set up in theroom, and it was two-thirds full but felt one-third empty.

For a while, I just watched people walkup to the coffin, which was on some kind ofcart covered in a purple tablecloth. All these

people I’d never seen before would kneeldown next to him or stand over him and lookat him for a while, maybe crying, maybe say-ing something, and then all of them wouldtouch the coffin instead of touching him, be-cause no one wants to touch the dead.

Gus’s mom and dad were standing nextto the coffin, hugging everybody as theypassed by, but when they noticed me, theysmiled and shuffled over. I got up andhugged first his dad and then his mom, whoheld on to me too tight, like Gus used to,squeezing my shoulder blades. They bothlooked so old—their eye sockets hollowed,the skin sagging from their exhausted faces.They had reached the end of a hurdlingsprint, too.

“He loved you so much,” Gus’s momsaid. “He really did. It wasn’t—it wasn’tpuppy love or anything,” she added, as if Ididn’t know that.

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“He loved you so much, too,” I saidquietly. It’s hard to explain, but talking tothem felt like stabbing and being stabbed.“I’m sorry,” I said. And then his parents weretalking to my parents—the conversation allnodding and tight lips. I looked up at thecasket and saw it unattended, so I decided towalk up there. I pulled the oxygen tube frommy nostrils and raised the tube up over myhead, handing it to Dad. I wanted it to be justme and just him. I grabbed my little clutchand walked up the makeshift aisle betweenthe rows of chairs.

The walk felt long, but I kept telling mylungs to shut up, that they were strong, thatthey could do this. I could see him as I ap-proached: His hair was parted neatly on theleft side in a way that he would have foundabsolutely horrifying, and his face was plasti-cized. But he was still Gus. My lanky, beauti-ful Gus.

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I wanted to wear the little black dress I’dbought for my fifteenth birthday party, mydeath dress, but I didn’t fit into it anymore,so I wore a plain black dress, knee-length.Augustus wore the same thin-lapeled suithe’d worn to Oranjee.

As I knelt, I realized they’d closed hiseyes—of course they had—and that I wouldnever again see his blue eyes. “I love youpresent tense,” I whispered, and then put myhand on the middle of his chest and said,“It’s okay, Gus. It’s okay. It is. It’s okay, youhear me?” I had—and have—absolutely noconfidence that he could hear me. I leanedforward and kissed his cheek. “Okay,” I said.“Okay.”

I suddenly felt conscious that there wereall these people watching us, that the lasttime so many people saw us kiss we were inthe Anne Frank House. But there was, prop-erly speaking, no us left to watch. Only a me.

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I snapped open the clutch, reached in,and pulled out a hard pack of Camel Lights.In a quick motion I hoped no one behindwould notice, I snuck them into the spacebetween his side and the coffin’s plush silverlining. “You can light these,” I whispered tohim. “I won’t mind.”

While I was talking to him, Mom and Dadhad moved up to the second row with mytank, so I didn’t have a long walk back. Dadhanded me a tissue as I sat down. I blew mynose, threaded the tubes around my ears,and put the nubbins back in.

I thought we’d go into the proper sanc-tuary for the real funeral, but it all happenedin that little side room—the Literal Hand ofJesus, I guess, the part of the cross he’d beennailed to. A minister walked up and stoodbehind the coffin, almost like the coffin was apulpit or something, and talked a little bitabout how Augustus had a courageous battle

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and how his heroism in the face of illnesswas an inspiration to us all, and I wasalready starting to get pissed off at the minis-ter when he said, “In heaven, Augustus willfinally be healed and whole,” implying thathe had been less whole than other peopledue to his leglessness, and I kind of could notrepress my sigh of disgust. My dad grabbedme just above the knee and cut me a disap-proving look, but from the row behind me,someone muttered almost inaudibly near myear, “What a load of horse crap, eh, kid?”

I spun around.Peter Van Houten wore a white linen

suit, tailored to account for his rotundity, apowder-blue dress shirt, and a green tie. Helooked like he was dressed for a colonial oc-cupation of Panama, not a funeral. The min-ister said, “Let us pray,” but as everyone elsebowed their head, I could only stare slack-jawed at the sight of Peter Van Houten. After

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a moment, he whispered, “We gotta fakepray,” and bowed his head.

I tried to forget about him and just prayfor Augustus. I made a point of listening tothe minister and not looking back.

The minister called up Isaac, who wasmuch more serious than he’d been at theprefuneral. “Augustus Waters was the Mayorof the Secret City of Cancervania, and he isnot replaceable,” Isaac began. “Other peoplewill be able to tell you funny stories aboutGus, because he was a funny guy, but let metell you a serious one: A day after I got myeye cut out, Gus showed up at the hospital. Iwas blind and heartbroken and didn’t wantto do anything and Gus burst into my roomand shouted, ‘I have wonderful news!’ And Iwas like, ‘I don’t really want to hear wonder-ful news right now,’ and Gus said, ‘This iswonderful news you want to hear,’ and Iasked him, ‘Fine, what is it?’ and he said,‘You are going to live a good and long life

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filled with great and terrible moments thatyou cannot even imagine yet!’”

Isaac couldn’t go on, or maybe that wasall he had written.

After a high school friend told some storiesabout Gus’s considerable basketball talentsand his many qualities as a teammate, theminister said, “We’ll now hear a few wordsfrom Augustus’s special friend, Hazel.” Spe-cial friend? There were some titters in theaudience, so I figured it was safe for me tostart out by saying to the minister, “I was hisgirlfriend.” That got a laugh. Then I beganreading from the eulogy I’d written.

“There’s a great quote in Gus’s house,one that both he and I found very comfort-ing: Without pain, we couldn’t know joy.”

I went on spouting bullshit Encourage-ments as Gus’s parents, arm in arm, huggedeach other and nodded at every word. Funer-als, I had decided, are for the living.

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After his sister Julie spoke, the service endedwith a prayer about Gus’s union with God,and I thought back to what he’d told me atOranjee, that he didn’t believe in mansionsand harps, but did believe in capital-S So-mething, and so I tried to imagine him capit-al-S Somewhere as we prayed, but even thenI could not quite convince myself that he andI would be together again. I already knew toomany dead people. I knew that time wouldnow pass for me differently than it would forhim—that I, like everyone in that room,would go on accumulating loves and losseswhile he would not. And for me, that was thefinal and truly unbearable tragedy: Like allthe innumerable dead, he’d once and for allbeen demoted from haunted to haunter.

And then one of Gus’s brothers-in-lawbrought up a boom box and they played thissong Gus had picked out—a sad and quietsong by The Hectic Glow called “The New

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Partner.” I just wanted to go home, honestly.I didn’t know hardly any of these people, andI felt Peter Van Houten’s little eyes boring in-to my exposed shoulder blades, but after thesong was over, everyone had to come up tome and tell me that I’d spoken beautifully,and that it was a lovely service, which was alie: It was a funeral. It looked like any otherfuneral.

His pallbearers—cousins, his dad, anuncle, friends I’d never seen—came and gothim, and they all started walking toward thehearse.

When Mom and Dad and I got in thecar, I said, “I don’t want to go. I’m tired.”

“Hazel,” Mom said.“Mom, there won’t be a place to sit and

it’ll last forever and I’m exhausted.”“Hazel, we have to go for Mr. and Mrs.

Waters,” Mom said.“Just . . .” I said. I felt so little in the

backseat for some reason. I kind of wanted to

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be little. I wanted to be like six years old orsomething. “Fine,” I said.

I just stared out the window awhile. Ireally didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to seethem lower him into the ground in the spothe’d picked out with his dad, and I didn’twant to see his parents sink to their knees inthe dew-wet grass and moan in pain, and Ididn’t want to see Peter Van Houten’s alco-holic belly stretched against his linen jacket,and I didn’t want to cry in front of a bunch ofpeople, and I didn’t want to toss a handful ofdirt onto his grave, and I didn’t want my par-ents to have to stand there beneath the clearblue sky with its certain slant of afternoonlight, thinking about their day and their kidand my plot and my casket and my dirt.

But I did these things. I did all of themand worse, because Mom and Dad felt weshould.

* * *

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After it was over, Van Houten walked up tome and put a fat hand on my shoulder andsaid, “Could I hitch a ride? Left my rental atthe bottom of the hill.” I shrugged, and heopened the door to the backseat right as mydad unlocked the car.

Inside, he leaned between the frontseats and said, “Peter Van Houten: NovelistEmeritus and SemiprofessionalDisappointer.”

My parents introduced themselves. Heshook their hands. I was pretty surprisedthat Peter Van Houten had flown halfwayacross the world to attend a funeral. “Howdid you even—” I started, but he cut me off.

“I used the infernal Internet of yours tofollow the Indianapolis obituary notices.” Hereached into his linen suit and produced afifth of whiskey.

“And you just like bought a ticket and—”He interrupted again while unscrewing

the cap. “It was fifteen thousand for a first-

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class ticket, but I’m sufficiently capitalized toindulge such whims. And the drinks are freeon the flight. If you’re ambitious, you can al-most break even.”

Van Houten took a swig of the whiskeyand then leaned forward to offer it to mydad, who said, “Um, no thanks.” Then VanHouten nodded the bottle toward me. Igrabbed it.

“Hazel,” my mom said, but I unscrewedthe cap and sipped. It made my stomach feellike my lungs. I handed the bottle back toVan Houten, who took a long slug from itand then said, “So. Omnis cellula e cellula.”

“Huh?”“Your boy Waters and I corresponded a

bit, and in his last—”“Wait, you read your fan mail now?”“No, he sent it to my house, not through

my publisher. And I’d hardly call him a fan.He despised me. But at any rate he was quiteinsistent that I’d be absolved for my

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misbehavior if I attended his funeral andtold you what became of Anna’s mother. Sohere I am, and there’s your answer: Omniscellula e cellula.”

“What?” I asked again.“Omnis cellula e cellula,” he said again.

“All cells come from cells. Every cell is bornof a previous cell, which was born of a previ-ous cell. Life comes from life. Life begets lifebegets life begets life begets life.”

We reached the bottom of the hill.“Okay, yeah,” I said. I was in no mood forthis. Peter Van Houten would not hijackGus’s funeral. I wouldn’t allow it. “Thanks,” Isaid. “Well, I guess we’re at the bottom of thehill.”

“You don’t want an explanation?” heasked.

“No,” I said. “I’m good. I think you’re apathetic alcoholic who says fancy things toget attention like a really precocious eleven-year-old and I feel super bad for you. But

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yeah, no, you’re not the guy who wrote AnImperial Affliction anymore, so you couldn’tsequel it even if you wanted to. Thanks,though. Have an excellent life.”

“But—”“Thanks for the booze,” I said. “Now get

out of the car.” He looked scolded. Dad hadstopped the car and we just idled there belowGus’s grave for a minute until Van Houtenopened the door and, finally silent, left.

As we drove away, I watched throughthe back window as he took a drink andraised the bottle in my direction, as if toast-ing me. His eyes looked so sad. I felt kindabad for him, to be honest.

We finally got home around six, and I wasexhausted. I just wanted to sleep, but Mommade me eat some cheesy pasta, althoughshe at least allowed me to eat in bed. I sleptwith the BiPAP for a couple hours. Wakingup was horrible, because for a disoriented

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moment I felt like everything was fine, andthen it crushed me anew. Mom took me offthe BiPAP, I tethered myself to a portabletank, and stumbled into my bathroom tobrush my teeth.

Appraising myself in the mirror as Ibrushed my teeth, I kept thinking there weretwo kinds of adults: There were Peter VanHoutens—miserable creatures who scouredthe earth in search of something to hurt. Andthen there were people like my parents, whowalked around zombically, doing whateverthey had to do to keep walking around.

Neither of these futures struck me asparticularly desirable. It seemed to me that Ihad already seen everything pure and goodin the world, and I was beginning to suspectthat even if death didn’t get in the way, thekind of love that Augustus and I share couldnever last. So dawn goes down to day, thepoet wrote. Nothing gold can stay.

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Someone knocked on the bathroomdoor.

“Occupada,” I said.“Hazel,” my dad said. “Can I come in?” I

didn’t answer, but after a while I unlockedthe door. I sat down on the closed toilet seat.Why did breathing have to be such work?Dad knelt down next to me. He grabbed myhead and pulled it into his collarbone, and hesaid, “I’m sorry Gus died.” I felt kind of suf-focated by his T-shirt, but it felt good to beheld so hard, pressed into the comfortablesmell of my dad. It was almost like he wasangry or something, and I liked that, becauseI was angry, too. “It’s total bullshit,” he said.“The whole thing. Eighty percent survivalrate and he’s in the twenty percent? Bullshit.He was such a bright kid. It’s bullshit. I hateit. But it was sure a privilege to love him,huh?”

I nodded into his shirt.

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“Gives you an idea how I feel aboutyou,” he said.

My old man. He always knew just whatto say.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

A couple days later, I got up around noonand drove over to Isaac’s house. Heanswered the door himself. “My mom tookGraham to a movie,” he said.

“We should go do something,” I said.“Can the something be play blind-guy

video games while sitting on the couch?”“Yeah, that’s just the kind of something I

had in mind.”

So we sat there for a couple hours talk-ing to the screen together, navigating this in-visible labyrinthine cave without a single lu-men of light. The most entertaining part ofthe game by far was trying to get the com-puter to engage us in humorousconversation:

Me: “Touch the cave wall.”Computer: “You touch the cave wall. It

is moist.”Isaac: “Lick the cave wall.”Computer: “I do not understand.

Repeat?”Me: “Hump the moist cave wall.”Computer: “You attempt to jump. You

hit your head.”Isaac: “Not jump. HUMP.”Computer: “I don’t understand.”Isaac: “Dude, I’ve been alone in the dark

in this cave for weeks and I need some relief.HUMP THE CAVE WALL.”

Computer: “You attempt to ju—”

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Me: “Thrust pelvis against the cavewall.”

Computer: “I do not—”Isaac: “Make sweet love to the cave.”Computer: “I do not—”Me: “FINE. Follow left branch.”Computer: “You follow the left branch.

The passage narrows.”Me: “Crawl.”Computer: “You crawl for one hundred

yards. The passage narrows.”Me: “Snake crawl.”Computer: “You snake crawl for thirty

yards. A trickle of water runs down yourbody. You reach a mound of small rocksblocking the passageway.”

Me: “Can I hump the cave now?”Computer: “You cannot jump without

standing.”Isaac: “I dislike living in a world without

Augustus Waters.”Computer: “I don’t understand—”

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Isaac: “Me neither. Pause.”

He dropped the remote onto the couchbetween us and asked, “Do you know if ithurt or whatever?”

“He was really fighting for breath, Iguess,” I said. “He eventually went uncon-scious, but it sounds like, yeah, it wasn’tgreat or anything. Dying sucks.”

“Yeah,” Isaac said. And then after a longtime, “It just seems so impossible.”

“Happens all the time,” I said.“You seem angry,” he said.“Yeah,” I said. We just sat there quiet for

a long time, which was fine, and I was think-ing about way back in the very beginning inthe Literal Heart of Jesus when Gus told usthat he feared oblivion, and I told him thathe was fearing something universal and inev-itable, and how really, the problem is notsuffering itself or oblivion itself but the de-praved meaninglessness of these things, the

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absolutely inhuman nihilism of suffering. Ithought of my dad telling me that the uni-verse wants to be noticed. But what we wantis to be noticed by the universe, to have theuniverse give a shit what happens to us—notthe collective idea of sentient life but each ofus, as individuals.

“Gus really loved you, you know,” hesaid.

“I know.”“He wouldn’t shut up about it.”“I know,” I said.“It was annoying.”“I didn’t find it that annoying,” I said.“Did he ever give you that thing he was

writing?”“What thing?”“That sequel or whatever to that book

you liked.”I turned to Isaac. “What?”“He said he was working on something

for you but he wasn’t that good of a writer.”

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“When did he say this?”“I don’t know. Like, after he got back

from Amsterdam at some point.”“At which point?” I pressed. Had he not

had a chance to finish it? Had he finished itand left it on his computer or something?

“Um,” Isaac sighed. “Um, I don’t know.We talked about it over here once. He wasover here, like—uh, we played with my emailmachine and I’d just gotten an email frommy grandmother. I can check on the machineif you—”

“Yeah, yeah, where is it?”

He’d mentioned it a month before. A month.Not a good month, admittedly, but still—amonth. That was enough time for him tohave written something, at least. There wasstill something of him, or by him at least,floating around out there. I needed it.

“I’m gonna go to his house,” I told Isaac.

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I hurried out to the minivan and hauledthe oxygen cart up and into the passengerseat. I started the car. A hip-hop beat blaredfrom the stereo, and as I reached to changethe radio station, someone started rapping.In Swedish.

I swiveled around and screamed when Isaw Peter Van Houten sitting in thebackseat.

“I apologize for alarming you,” PeterVan Houten said over the rapping. He wasstill wearing the funeral suit, almost a weeklater. He smelled like he was sweating alco-hol. “You’re welcome to keep the CD,” hesaid. “It’s Snook, one of the majorSwedish—”

“Ah ah ah ah GET OUT OF MY CAR.” Iturned off the stereo.

“It’s your mother’s car, as I understandit,” he said. “Also, it wasn’t locked.”

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“Oh, my God! Get out of the car or I’llcall nine-one-one. Dude, what is yourproblem?”

“If only there were just one,” he mused.“I am here simply to apologize. You werecorrect in noting earlier that I am a patheticlittle man, dependent upon alcohol. I hadone acquaintance who only spent time withme because I paid her to do so—worse, still,she has since quit, leaving me the rare soulwho cannot acquire companionship eventhrough bribery. It is all true, Hazel. All thatand more.”

“Okay,” I said. It would have been amore moving speech had he not slurred hiswords.

“You remind me of Anna.”“I remind a lot of people of a lot of

people,” I answered. “I really have to go.”“So drive,” he said.“Get out.”

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“No. You remind me of Anna,” he saidagain. After a second, I put the car in reverseand backed out. I couldn’t make him leave,and I didn’t have to. I’d drive to Gus’s house,and Gus’s parents would make him leave.

“You are, of course, familiar,” VanHouten said, “with Antonietta Meo.”

“Yeah, no,” I said. I turned on the stereo,and the Swedish hip-hop blared, but VanHouten yelled over it.

“She may soon be the youngest nonmar-tyr saint ever beatified by the CatholicChurch. She had the same cancer that Mr.Waters had, osteosarcoma. They removedher right leg. The pain was excruciating. AsAntonietta Meo lay dying at the ripened ageof six from this agonizing cancer, she toldher father, ‘Pain is like fabric: The stronger itis, the more it’s worth.’ Is that true, Hazel?”

I wasn’t looking at him directly but athis reflection in the mirror. “No,” I shoutedover the music. “That’s bullshit.”

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“But don’t you wish it were true!” hecried back. I cut the music. “I’m sorry Iruined your trip. You were too young. Youwere—” He broke down. As if he had a rightto cry over Gus. Van Houten was just anoth-er of the endless mourners who did not knowhim, another too-late lamentation on hiswall.

“You didn’t ruin our trip, you self-im-portant bastard. We had an awesome trip.”

“I am trying,” he said. “I am trying, Iswear.” It was around then that I realizedPeter Van Houten had a dead person in hisfamily. I considered the honesty with whichhe had written about cancer kids; the factthat he couldn’t speak to me in Amsterdamexcept to ask if I’d dressed like her on pur-pose; his shittiness around me and Augus-tus; his aching question about the relation-ship between pain’s extremity and its value.He sat back there drinking, an old manwho’d been drunk for years. I thought of a

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statistic I wish I didn’t know: Half of mar-riages end in the year after a child’s death. Ilooked back at Van Houten. I was drivingdown College and I pulled over behind a lineof parked cars and asked, “You had a kid whodied?”

“My daughter,” he said. “She was eight.Suffered beautifully. Will never be beatified.”

“She had leukemia?” I asked. He nod-ded. “Like Anna,” I said.

“Very much like her, yes.”“You were married?”“No. Well, not at the time of her death. I

was insufferable long before we lost her.Grief does not change you, Hazel. It revealsyou.”

“Did you live with her?”“No, not primarily, although at the end,

we brought her to New York, where I was liv-ing, for a series of experimental tortures thatincreased the misery of her days without in-creasing the number of them.”

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After a second, I said, “So it’s like yougave her this second life where she got to bea teenager.”

“I suppose that would be a fair assess-ment,” he said, and then quickly added, “Iassume you are familiar with Philippa Foot’sTrolley Problem thought experiment?”

“And then I show up at your house andI’m dressed like the girl you hoped she wouldlive to become and you’re, like, all takenaback by it.”

“There’s a trolley running out of controldown a track,” he said.

“I don’t care about your stupid thoughtexperiment,” I said.

“It’s Philippa Foot’s, actually.”“Well, hers either,” I said.“She didn’t understand why it was hap-

pening,” he said. “I had to tell her she woulddie. Her social worker said I had to tell her. Ihad to tell her she would die, so I told hershe was going to heaven. She asked if I would

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be there, and I said that I would not, not yet.But eventually, she said, and I promised thatyes, of course, very soon. And I told her thatin the meantime we had great family upthere that would take care of her. And sheasked me when I would be there, and I toldher soon. Twenty-two years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”“So am I.”After a while, I asked, “What happened

to her mom?”He smiled. “You’re still looking for your

sequel, you little rat.”I smiled back. “You should go home,” I

told him. “Sober up. Write another novel. Dothe thing you’re good at. Not many peopleare lucky enough to be so good atsomething.”

He stared at me through the mirror for along time. “Okay,” he said. “Yeah. You’reright. You’re right.” But even as he said it, hepulled out his mostly empty fifth of whiskey.

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He drank, recapped the bottle, and openedthe door. “Good-bye, Hazel.”

“Take it easy, Van Houten.”He sat down on the curb behind the car.

As I watched him shrink in the rearview mir-ror, he pulled out the bottle and for a secondit looked like he would leave it on the curb.And then he took a swig.

It was a hot afternoon in Indianapolis, theair thick and still like we were inside a cloud.It was the worst kind of air for me, and I toldmyself it was just the air when the walk fromhis driveway to his front door felt infinite. Irang the doorbell, and Gus’s mom answered.

“Oh, Hazel,” she said, and kind of envel-oped me, crying.

She made me eat some eggplantlasagna—I guess a lot of people had broughtthem food or whatever—with her and Gus’sdad. “How are you?”

“I miss him.”

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“Yeah.”I didn’t really know what to say. I just

wanted to go downstairs and find whateverhe’d written for me. Plus, the silence in theroom really bothered me. I wanted them tobe talking to each other, comforting or hold-ing hands or whatever. But they just satthere eating very small amounts of lasagna,not even looking at each other. “Heavenneeded an angel,” his dad said after a while.

“I know,” I said. Then his sisters andtheir mess of kids showed up and piled intothe kitchen. I got up and hugged both his sis-ters and then watched the kids run aroundthe kitchen with their sorely needed surplusof noise and movement, excited moleculesbouncing against each other and shouting,“You’re it no you’re it no I was it but then Itagged you you didn’t tag me you missed mewell I’m tagging you now no dumb butt it’s atime-out DANIEL DO NOT CALL YOURBROTHER A DUMB BUTT Mom if I’m not

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allowed to use that word how come you justused it dumb butt dumb butt,” and then,chorally, dumb butt dumb butt dumb buttdumb butt, and at the table Gus’s parentswere now holding hands, which made mefeel better.

“Isaac told me Gus was writingsomething, something for me,” I said. Thekids were still singing their dumb-butt song.

“We can check his computer,” his momsaid.

“He wasn’t on it much the last fewweeks,” I said.

“That’s true. I’m not even sure webrought it upstairs. Is it still in the basement,Mark?”

“No idea.”“Well,” I said, “can I . . .” I nodded to-

ward the basement door.“We’re not ready,” his dad said. “But of

course, yes, Hazel. Of course you can.”

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I walked downstairs, past his unmade bed,past the gaming chairs beneath the TV. Hiscomputer was still on. I tapped the mouse towake it up and then searched for his most re-cently edited files. Nothing in the last month.The most recent thing was a response paperto Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.

Maybe he’d written something by hand.I walked over to his bookshelves, looking fora journal or a notebook. Nothing. I flippedthrough his copy of An Imperial Affliction.He hadn’t left a single mark in it.

I walked to his bedside table next. Infin-ite Mayhem, the ninth sequel to The Price ofDawn, lay atop the table next to his readinglamp, the corner of page 138 turned down.He’d never made it to the end of the book.“Spoiler alert: Mayhem survives,” I said outloud to him, just in case he could hear me.

And then I crawled into his unmade bed,wrapping myself in his comforter like a co-coon, surrounding myself with his smell. I

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took out my cannula so I could smell better,breathing him in and breathing him out, thescent fading even as I lay there, my chestburning until I couldn’t distinguish amongthe pains.

I sat up in the bed after a while and rein-serted my cannula and breathed for a whilebefore going up the stairs. I just shook myhead no in response to his parents’ expectantlooks. The kids raced past me. One of Gus’ssisters—I could not tell them apart—said,“Mom, do you want me to take them to thepark or something?”

“No, no, they’re fine.”“Is there anywhere he might have put a

notebook? Like by his hospital bed orsomething?” The bed was already gone, re-claimed by hospice.

“Hazel,” his dad said, “you were thereevery day with us. You— he wasn’t alonemuch, sweetie. He wouldn’t have had time towrite anything. I know you want . . . I want

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that, too. But the messages he leaves for usnow are coming from above, Hazel.” Hepointed toward the ceiling, as if Gus werehovering just above the house. Maybe hewas. I don’t know. I didn’t feel his presence,though.

“Yeah,” I said. I promised to visit themagain in a few days.

I never quite caught his scent again.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Three days later, on the eleventh day AG,Gus’s father called me in the morning. I wasstill hooked to the BiPAP, so I didn’t answer,but I listened to his message the moment itbeeped through to my phone. “Hazel, hi, it’sGus’s dad. I found a, uh, black Moleskinenotebook in the magazine rack that was nearhis hospital bed, I think near enough that hecould have reached it. Unfortunately there’sno writing in the notebook. All the pages are

blank. But the first—I think three orfour—the first few pages are torn out of thenotebook. We looked through the house butcouldn’t find the pages. So I don’t know whatto make of that. But maybe those pages arewhat Isaac was referring to? Anyway, I hopethat you are doing okay. You’re in our pray-ers every day, Hazel. Okay, bye.”

Three or four pages ripped from a Mole-skine notebook no longer in AugustusWaters’s house. Where would he leave themfor me? Taped to Funky Bones? No, hewasn’t well enough to get there.

The Literal Heart of Jesus. Maybe he’dleft it there for me on his Last Good Day.

So I left twenty minutes early for Sup-port Group the next day. I drove over toIsaac’s house, picked him up, and then wedrove down to the Literal Heart of Jesus withthe windows of the minivan down, listeningto The Hectic Glow’s leaked new album,which Gus would never hear.

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We took the elevator. I walked Isaac to aseat in the Circle of Trust then slowly workedmy way around the Literal Heart. I checkedeverywhere: under the chairs, around thelectern I’d stood behind while delivering myeulogy, under the treat table, on the bulletinboard packed with Sunday school kids’ draw-ings of God’s love. Nothing. It was the onlyplace we’d been together in those last daysbesides his house, and it either wasn’t hereor I was missing something. Perhaps he’dleft it for me in the hospital, but if so, it hadalmost certainly been thrown away after hisdeath.

I was really out of breath by the time Isettled into a chair next to Isaac, and I de-voted the entirety of Patrick’s nutless testi-monial to telling my lungs they were okay,that they could breathe, that there wasenough oxygen. They’d been drained only aweek before Gus died—I watched the ambercancer water dribble out of me through the

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tube—and yet already they felt full again. Iwas so focused on telling myself to breathethat I didn’t notice Patrick saying my nameat first.

I snapped to attention. “Yeah?” I asked.“How are you?”“I’m okay, Patrick. I’m a little out of

breath.”“Would you like to share a memory of

Augustus with the group?”“I wish I would just die, Patrick. Do you

ever wish you would just die?”“Yes,” Patrick said, without his usual

pause. “Yes, of course. So why don’t you?”I thought about it. My old stock answer

was that I wanted to stay alive for my par-ents, because they would be all gutted andchildless in the wake of me, and that was stilltrue kind of, but that wasn’t it, exactly. “Idon’t know.”

“In the hopes that you’ll get better?”

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“No,” I said. “No, it’s not that. I reallydon’t know. Isaac?” I asked. I was tired oftalking.

Isaac started talking about true love. Icouldn’t tell them what I was thinking be-cause it seemed cheesy to me, but I wasthinking about the universe wanting to benoticed, and how I had to notice it as best Icould. I felt that I owed a debt to the uni-verse that only my attention could repay, andalso that I owed a debt to everybody whodidn’t get to be a person anymore and every-one who hadn’t gotten to be a person yet.What my dad had told me, basically.

I stayed quiet for the rest of SupportGroup, and Patrick said a special prayer forme, and Gus’s name was tacked onto thelong list of the dead—fourteen of them forevery one of us—and we promised to live ourbest life today, and then I took Isaac to thecar.

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When I got home, Mom and Dad were at thedining room table on their separate laptops,and the moment I walked in the door, Momslammed her laptop shut. “What’s on thecomputer?”

“Just some antioxidant recipes. Readyfor BiPAP and America’s Next Top Model?”she asked.

“I’m just going to lie down for a minute.”“Are you okay?”“Yeah, just tired.”“Well, you’ve gotta eat before you—”“Mom, I am aggressively unhungry.” I

took a step toward the door but she cut meoff.

“Hazel, you have to eat. Just some ch—”“No. I’m going to bed.”“No,” Mom said. “You’re not.” I glanced

at my dad, who shrugged.“It’s my life,” I said.

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“You’re not going to starve yourself todeath just because Augustus died. You’re go-ing to eat dinner.”

I was really pissed off for some reason.“I can’t eat, Mom. I can’t. Okay?”

I tried to push past her but she grabbedboth my shoulders and said, “Hazel, you’reeating dinner. You need to stay healthy.”

“NO!” I shouted. “I’m not eating dinner,and I can’t stay healthy, because I’m nothealthy. I am dying, Mom. I am going to dieand leave you here alone and you won’t havea me to hover around and you won’t be amother anymore, and I’m sorry, but I can’tdo anything about it, okay?!”

I regretted it as soon as I said it.“You heard me.”“What?”“Did you hear me say that to your fath-

er?” Her eyes welled up. “Did you?” I nod-ded. “Oh, God, Hazel. I’m sorry. I was wrong,sweetie. That wasn’t true. I said that in a

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desperate moment. It’s not something I be-lieve.” She sat down, and I sat down withher. I was thinking that I should have justpuked up some pasta for her instead of get-ting pissed off.

“What do you believe, then?” I asked.“As long as either of us is alive, I will be

your mother,” she said. “Even if you die, I—”“When,” I said.She nodded. “Even when you die, I will

still be your mom, Hazel. I won’t stop beingyour mom. Have you stopped loving Gus?” Ishook my head. “Well, then how could I stoploving you?”

“Okay,” I said. My dad was crying now.“I want you guys to have a life,” I said. “I

worry that you won’t have a life, that you’llsit around here all day with no me to lookafter and stare at the walls and want to offyourselves.”

After a minute, Mom said, “I’m takingsome classes. Online, through IU. To get my

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master’s in social work. In fact, I wasn’t look-ing at antioxidant recipes; I was writing apaper.”

“Seriously?”“I don’t want you to think I’m imagining

a world without you. But if I get my MSW, Ican counsel families in crisis or lead groupsdealing with illness in their families or—”

“Wait, you’re going to become aPatrick?”

“Well, not exactly. There are all kinds ofsocial work jobs.”

Dad said, “We’ve both been worried thatyou’ll feel abandoned. It’s important for youto know that we will always be here for you,Hazel. Your mom isn’t going anywhere.”

“No, this is great. This is fantastic!” Iwas really smiling. “Mom is going to becomea Patrick. She’ll be a great Patrick! She’ll beso much better at it than Patrick is.”

“Thank you, Hazel. That meanseverything to me.”

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I nodded. I was crying. I couldn’t getover how happy I was, crying genuine tearsof actual happiness for the first time inmaybe forever, imagining my mom as a Pat-rick. It made me think of Anna’s mom. Shewould’ve been a good social worker, too.

After a while we turned on the TV andwatched ANTM. But I paused it after fiveseconds because I had all these questions forMom. “So how close are you to finishing?”

“If I go up to Bloomington for a weekthis summer, I should be able to finish byDecember.”

“How long have you been keeping thisfrom me, exactly?”

“A year.”“Mom.”“I didn’t want to hurt you, Hazel.”Amazing. “So when you’re waiting for

me outside of MCC or Support Group orwhatever, you’re always—”

“Yes, working or reading.”

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“This is so great. If I’m dead, I want youto know I will be sighing at you from heavenevery time you ask someone to share theirfeelings.”

My dad laughed. “I’ll be right there withya, kiddo,” he assured me.

Finally, we watched ANTM. Dad triedreally hard not to die of boredom, and hekept messing up which girl was which, say-ing, “We like her?”

“No, no. We revile Anastasia. We likeAntonia, the other blonde,” Mom explained.

“They’re all tall and horrible,” Dad re-sponded. “Forgive me for failing to tell thedifference.” Dad reached across me forMom’s hand.

“Do you think you guys will stay togeth-er if I die?” I asked.

“Hazel, what? Sweetie.” She fumbled forthe remote control and paused the TV again.“What’s wrong?”

“Just, do you think you would?”

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“Yes, of course. Of course,” Dad said.“Your mom and I love each other, and if welose you, we’ll go through it together.”

“Swear to God,” I said.“I swear to God,” he said.I looked back at Mom. “Swear to God,”

she agreed. “Why are you even worryingabout this?”

“I just don’t want to ruin your life oranything.”

Mom leaned forward and pressed herface into my messy puff of hair and kissedme at the very top of my head. I said to Dad,“I don’t want you to become like a miserableunemployed alcoholic or whatever.”

My mom smiled. “Your father isn’t PeterVan Houten, Hazel. You of all people know itis possible to live with pain.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. Mom hugged meand I let her even though I didn’t really wantto be hugged. “Okay, you can unpause it,” I

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said. Anastasia got kicked off. She threw a fit.It was awesome.

I ate a few bites of dinner—bow-tie pastawith pesto—and managed to keep it down.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I woke up the next morning panicked be-cause I’d dreamed of being alone and boat-less in a huge lake. I bolted up, strainingagainst the BiPAP, and felt Mom’s arm onme.

“Hi, you okay?”My heart raced, but I nodded. Mom

said, “Kaitlyn’s on the phone for you.” I poin-ted at my BiPAP. She helped me get it off andhooked me up to Philip and then finally I

took my cell from Mom and said, “Hey,Kaitlyn.”

“Just calling to check in,” she said. “Seehow you’re doing.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “I’m doing okay.”“You’ve just had the worst luck, darling.

It’s unconscionable.”“I guess,” I said. I didn’t think much

about my luck anymore one way or the other.Honestly, I didn’t really want to talk withKaitlyn about anything, but she kept drag-ging the conversation along.

“So what was it like?” she asked.“Having your boyfriend die? Um, it

sucks.”“No,” she said. “Being in love.”“Oh,” I said. “Oh. It was . . . it was nice

to spend time with someone so interesting.We were very different, and we disagreedabout a lot of things, but he was always so in-teresting, you know?”

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“Alas, I do not. The boys I’m acquaintedwith are vastly uninteresting.”

“He wasn’t perfect or anything. Hewasn’t your fairy-tale Prince Charming orwhatever. He tried to be like that sometimes,but I liked him best when that stuff fellaway.”

“Do you have like a scrapbook of pic-tures and letters he wrote?”

“I have some pictures, but he neverreally wrote me letters. Except, well there aresome missing pages from his notebook thatmight have been something for me, but Iguess he threw them away or they got lost orsomething.”

“Maybe he mailed them to you,” shesaid.

“Nah, they’d’ve gotten here.”“Then maybe they weren’t written for

you,” she said. “Maybe . . . I mean, not to de-press you or anything, but maybe he wrotethem for someone else and mailed them—”

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“VAN HOUTEN!” I shouted.“Are you okay? Was that a cough?”“Kaitlyn, I love you. You are a genius. I

have to go.”I hung up, rolled over, reached for my

laptop, turned it on, and emailedlidewij.vliegenthart.

Lidewij,I believe Augustus Waters sent a fewpages from a notebook to Peter VanHouten shortly before he (Augustus)died. It is very important to me thatsomeone reads these pages. I want toread them, of course, but maybe theyweren’t written for me. Regardless, theymust be read. They must be. Can youhelp?

Your friend,Hazel Grace Lancaster

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She responded late that afternoon.

Dear Hazel,

I did not know that Augustus had died. Iam very sad to hear this news. He wassuch a very charismatic young man. Iam so sorry, and so sad.

I have not spoken to Peter since Iresigned that day we met. It is very lateat night here, but I am going over to hishouse first thing in the morning to findthis letter and force him to read it.Mornings were his best time, usually.

Your friend,Lidewij Vliegenthart

p.s. I am bringing my boyfriend in casewe have to physically restrain Peter.

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I wondered why he’d written Van Houten inthose last days instead of me, telling VanHouten that he’d be redeemed if only he gaveme my sequel. Maybe the notebook pageshad just repeated his request to Van Houten.It made sense, Gus leveraging his terminalityto make my dream come true: The sequelwas a tiny thing to die for, but it was thebiggest thing left at his disposal.

I refreshed my email continually thatnight, slept for a few hours, and then com-menced to refreshing around five in themorning. But nothing arrived. I tried towatch TV to distract myself, but my thoughtskept drifting back to Amsterdam, imaginingLidewij Vliegenthart and her boyfriend bi-cycling around town on this crazy mission tofind a dead kid’s last correspondence. Howfun it would be to bounce on the back ofLidewij Vliegenthart’s bike down the brickstreets, her curly red hair blowing into myface, the smell of the canals and cigarette

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smoke, all the people sitting outside the cafésdrinking beer, saying their r’s and g’s in away I’d never learn.

I missed the future. Obviously I kneweven before his recurrence that I’d nevergrow old with Augustus Waters. But thinkingabout Lidewij and her boyfriend, I feltrobbed. I would probably never again see theocean from thirty thousand feet above, so farup that you can’t make out the waves or anyboats, so that the ocean is a great and end-less monolith. I could imagine it. I could re-member it. But I couldn’t see it again, and itoccurred to me that the voracious ambitionof humans is never sated by dreams comingtrue, because there is always the thought thateverything might be done better and again.

That is probably true even if you live tobe ninety—although I’m jealous of the peoplewho get to find out for sure. Then again, I’dalready lived twice as long as Van Houten’s

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daughter. What he wouldn’t have given tohave a kid die at sixteen.

Suddenly Mom was standing betweenthe TV and me, her hands folded behind herback. “Hazel,” she said. Her voice was so ser-ious I thought something might be wrong.

“Yes?”“Do you know what today is?”“It’s not my birthday, is it?”She laughed. “Not just yet. It’s July four-

teenth, Hazel.”“Is it your birthday?”“No . . .”“Is it Harry Houdini’s birthday?”“No . . .”“I am really tired of guessing.”“IT IS BASTILLE DAY!” She pulled her

arms from behind her back, producing twosmall plastic French flags and waving thementhusiastically.

“That sounds like a fake thing. LikeCholera Awareness Day.”

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“I assure you, Hazel, that there is noth-ing fake about Bastille Day. Did you knowthat two hundred and twenty-three years agotoday, the people of France stormed theBastille prison to arm themselves to fight fortheir freedom?”

“Wow,” I said. “We should celebrate thismomentous anniversary.”

“It so happens that I have just nowscheduled a picnic with your father in Holli-day Park.”

She never stopped trying, my mom. Ipushed against the couch and stood up. To-gether, we cobbled together some sandwichmakings and found a dusty picnic basket inthe hallway utility closet.

It was kind of a beautiful day, finally realsummer in Indianapolis, warm and hu-mid—the kind of weather that reminds youafter a long winter that while the worldwasn’t built for humans, we were built for

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the world. Dad was waiting for us, wearing atan suit, standing in a handicapped parkingspot typing away on his handheld. He wavedas we parked and then hugged me. “What aday,” he said. “If we lived in California,they’d all be like this.”

“Yeah, but then you wouldn’t enjoythem,” my mom said. She was wrong, but Ididn’t correct her.

We ended up putting our blanket downby the Ruins, this weird rectangle of Romanruins plopped down in the middle of a fieldin Indianapolis. But they aren’t real ruins:They’re like a sculptural re-creation of ruinsbuilt eighty years ago, but the fake Ruinshave been neglected pretty badly, so theyhave kind of become actual ruins by acci-dent. Van Houten would like the Ruins. Gus,too.

So we sat in the shadow of the Ruinsand ate a little lunch. “Do you need sun-screen?” Mom asked.

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“I’m okay,” I said.You could hear the wind in the leaves,

and on that wind traveled the screams of thekids on the playground in the distance, thelittle kids figuring out how to be alive, how tonavigate a world that was not built for themby navigating a playground that was. Dadsaw me watching the kids and said, “Youmiss running around like that?”

“Sometimes, I guess.” But that wasn’twhat I was thinking. I was just trying to no-tice everything: the light on the ruinedRuins, this little kid who could barely walkdiscovering a stick at the corner of the play-ground, my indefatigable mother zigzaggingmustard across her turkey sandwich, my dadpatting his handheld in his pocket and resist-ing the urge to check it, a guy throwing aFrisbee that his dog kept running under andcatching and returning to him.

Who am I to say that these things mightnot be forever? Who is Peter Van Houten to

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assert as fact the conjecture that our labor istemporary? All I know of heaven and all Iknow of death is in this park: an elegant uni-verse in ceaseless motion, teeming withruined ruins and screaming children.

My dad was waving his hand in front ofmy face. “Tune in, Hazel. Are you there?”

“Sorry, yeah, what?”“Mom suggested we go see Gus?”“Oh. Yeah,” I said.

So after lunch, we drove down to Crown HillCemetery, the last and final resting place ofthree vice presidents, one president, andAugustus Waters. We drove up the hill andparked. Cars roared by behind us on Thiry-eighth Street. It was easy to find his grave: Itwas the newest. The earth was still moundedabove his coffin. No headstone yet.

I didn’t feel like he was there or any-thing, but I still took one of Mom’s dumblittle French flags and stuck it in the ground

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at the foot of his grave. Maybe passersbywould think he was a member of the FrenchForeign Legion or some heroic mercenary.

* * *

Lidewij finally wrote back just after six P.M.

while I was on the couch watching both TVand videos on my laptop. I saw immediatelythere were four attachments to the email andI wanted to open them first, but I resistedtemptation and read the email.

Dear Hazel,

Peter was very intoxicated when we ar-rived at his house this morning, but thismade our job somewhat easier. Bas (myboyfriend) distracted him while Isearched through the garbage bag Peterkeeps with the fan mail in it, but then Irealized that Augustus knew Peter’s ad-dress. There was a large pile of mail on

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his dining room table, where I found theletter very quickly. I opened it and sawthat it was addressed to Peter, so I askedhim to read it.

He refused.At this point, I became very angry,

Hazel, but I did not yell at him. Instead,I told him that he owed it to his deaddaughter to read this letter from a deadboy, and I gave him the letter and heread the entire thing and said—I quotehim directly—“Send it to the girl and tellher I have nothing to add.”

I have not read the letter, althoughmy eyes did fall on some phrases whilescanning the pages. I have attachedthem here and then will mail them toyou at your home; your address is thesame?

May God bless and keep you, Hazel.

Your friend,

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Lidewij Vliegenthart

I clicked open the four attachments. Hishandwriting was messy, slanting across thepage, the size of the letters varying, the colorof the pen changing. He’d written it overmany days in varying degrees ofconsciousness.

Van Houten,

I’m a good person but a shitty writer.You’re a shitty person but a good writer.We’d make a good team. I don’t want toask you any favors, but if you havetime—and from what I saw, you haveplenty—I was wondering if you couldwrite a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notesand everything, but if you could justmake it into a coherent whole orwhatever? Or even just tell me what Ishould say differently.

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Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almosteveryone is obsessed with leaving amark upon the world. Bequeathing alegacy. Outlasting death. We all want tobe remembered. I do, too. That’s whatbothers me most, is being another unre-membered casualty in the ancient andinglorious war against disease.

I want to leave a mark.

But Van Houten: The marks humansleave are too often scars. You build ahideous minimall or start a coup or tryto become a rock star and you think,“They’ll remember me now,” but (a)they don’t remember you, and (b) allyou leave behind are more scars. Yourcoup becomes a dictatorship. Your min-imall becomes a lesion.

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(Okay, maybe I’m not such a shittywriter. But I can’t pull my ideas togeth-er, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars Ican’t fathom into constellations.)

We are like a bunch of dogs squirting onfire hydrants. We poison the groundwa-ter with our toxic piss, markingeverything MINE in a ridiculous attemptto survive our deaths. I can’t stop piss-ing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly anduseless—epically useless in my currentstate—but I am an animal like any other.

Hazel is different. She walks lightly, oldman. She walks lightly upon the earth.Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely tohurt the universe as we are to help it,and we’re not likely to do either.

People will say it’s sad that she leaves alesser scar, that fewer remember her,

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that she was loved deeply but notwidely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’striumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that thereal heroism? Like the doctors say: First,do no harm.

The real heroes anyway aren’t thepeople doing things; the real heroes arethe people NOTICING things, paying at-tention. The guy who invented thesmallpox vaccine didn’t actually inventanything. He just noticed that peoplewith cowpox didn’t get smallpox.

After my PET scan lit up, I snuck intothe ICU and saw her while she was un-conscious. I just walked in behind anurse with a badge and I got to sit nextto her for like ten minutes before I gotcaught. I really thought she was going todie before I could tell her that I was go-ing to die, too. It was brutal: the

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incessant mechanized haranguing of in-tensive care. She had this dark cancerwater dripping out of her chest. Eyesclosed. Intubated. But her hand was stillher hand, still warm and the nailspainted this almost black dark blue andI just held her hand and tried to imaginethe world without us and for about onesecond I was a good enough person tohope she died so she would never knowthat I was going, too. But then I wantedmore time so we could fall in love. I gotmy wish, I suppose. I left my scar.

A nurse guy came in and told me I hadto leave, that visitors weren’t allowed,and I asked if she was doing okay, andthe guy said, “She’s still taking on wa-ter.” A desert blessing, an ocean curse.

What else? She is so beautiful. You don’tget tired of looking at her. You never

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worry if she is smarter than you: Youknow she is. She is funny without everbeing mean. I love her. I am so lucky tolove her, Van Houten. You don’t get tochoose if you get hurt in this world, oldman, but you do have some say in whohurts you. I like my choices. I hope shelikes hers.

I do, Augustus.I do.

Click here for more books from this author.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to acknowledge:

That disease and its treatment are treated ficti-tiously in this novel. For example, there is nosuch thing as Phalanxifor. I made it up, because Iwould like for it to exist. Anyone seeking an actu-al history of cancer ought to read The Emperor ofAll Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee. I am alsoindebted to The Biology of Cancer by Robert A.Weinberg, and to Josh Sundquist, Marshall Urist,and Jonneke Hollanders, who shared their timeand expertise with me on medical matters, whichI cheerfully ignored when it suited my whims.

Esther Earl, whose life was a gift to me and tomany. I am grateful also to the Earl family—Lori,Wayne, Abby, Angie, Grant, and Abe—for their

generosity and friendship. Inspired by Esther, theEarls have founded a nonprofit, This Star Won’tGo Out, in her memory. You can learn more attswgo.org.

The Dutch Literature Foundation, for giving metwo months in Amsterdam to write. I’m particu-larly grateful to Fleur van Koppen, Jean Cris-tophe Boele van Hensbroek, Janetta de With,Carlijn van Ravenstein, Margje Scheepsma, andthe Dutch nerdfighter community.

My editor and publisher, Julie Strauss-Gabel,who stuck with this story through many years oftwists and turns, as did an extraordinary team atPenguin. Particular thanks to Rosanne Lauer, De-borah Kaplan, Liza Kaplan, Steve Meltzer, NovaRen Suma, and Irene Vandervoort.

Ilene Cooper, my mentor and fairy godmother.

My agent, Jodi Reamer, whose sage counsel hassaved me from countless disasters.

Nerdfighters, for being awesome.

Catitude, for wanting nothing more than to makethe world suck less.

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My brother, Hank, who is my best friend andclosest collaborator.

My wife, Sarah, who is not only the great love ofmy life but also my first and most trusted reader.Also, the baby, Henry, to whom she gave birth.Furthermore, my own parents, Mike and SydneyGreen, and parents-in-law, Connie and MarshallUrist.

My friends Chris and Marina Waters, who helpedwith this story at vital moments, as did JoellenHosler, Shannon James, Vi Hart, the Venn dia-gramatically brilliant Karen Kavett, Valerie Barr,Rosianna Halse Rojas, and John Darnielle.

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PHOTO BY TON KOENE, 2009

JOHN GREEN is an award-winning,New York Times–bestselling author whose manyaccolades include the Printz Medal, a Printz

Honor, and the Edgar Award. He has twice beena finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. With hisbrother, Hank, John is one half of the Vlogbroth-ers (youtube.com/vlogbrothers), one of the mostpopular online video projects in the world. Youcan join John’s 1.1 million followers on Twitter(@realjohngreen), or visit him online atjohngreenbooks.com.

John lives with his wife and son in Indianapolis,Indiana.

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ALSO BY JOHN GREEN

Looking for Alaska

An Abundance of Katherines

Paper Towns

Will Grayson, Will GraysonWITH DAVID LEVITHAN

@Created by PDF to ePub